England and Europe in the Reign of Henry III (1216-1272) 0754604675, 9780754604679

Table of contents :
Cover
Title
Copyright
Contents
List of Illustrations
List of Contributors
Preface
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1 Negotiating Anglo-Welsh Relations: Llywelyn the Great and Henry III
2 Reconfiguring the Angevin Empire, 1224–1259
3 Henry the Peaceable: Henry III, Alexander III and Royal Lordship in the British Isles, 1249–1272
4 England and the Albigensian Crusade
5 Henry III (1216–1272), Alfonso X of Castile (1252–1284) and the Crusading Plans of the Thirteenth Century (1245–1272)
6 The Monastic World
7 Henry III Through Foreign Eyes - Communication and Historical Writing in Thirteenth-Century Europe
8 Royal Women of England and France in the Mid-Thirteenth Century: A Gendered Perspective
9 Roger of Wendover and the Wars of Henry III, 1216–1234
10 How to get on in England in the Thirteenth Century? Dietrich of Cologne, burgess of Stamford
11 Henry III's England and the Curia
Index

Citation preview

ENGLAND AND EUROPE IN THE REIGN OF HENRY III (1216-1272)

The close political, economic and cultural ties that developed between England and its neighbours were a defining feature of the rule of Henry III, which permeated nearly all levels of society from the king and his barons to the Church and merchants, artisans and fortune hunters. They were evident both in the high politics of Henry III, as well as in the more general cultural developments, as can be seen in the French architecture, Italian masonry and German gold work of Westminster Abbey. They can likewise be traced with regard to individuals such as Simon de Montfort, whose family was active in the Holy Land, Languedoc, Northern France and England. In short, thirteenth-century England formed part of a broader European cultural, political and economic commonwealth. The essays that form this volume demonstrate the variety and strength of these contacts between England and her neighbours during Henry's reign, and by seeking to place Henry's England within a broader geographical and thematic range, will contribute to a broader understanding of England's place within thirteenth-century Europe.

England and Europe in the Reign of Henry III (1216-1272)

Edited by BJORN K. U. WEILER University ofWales, Aberystwyth with IFOR W. ROWLANDS University of Wales, Swansea

~~ ~~o~.t!;~~~up LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2002 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint ofthe Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright© Bjorn K.U. Weiler 2002 Bjorn K.U. Weiler has asserted his moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editor of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data England and Europe in the reign of Henry III (1216-1272) 1. Great Britain- History- Henry III, 1216-1272 2. EuropeHistory - 476-1492 I. Weiler, Bjorn K.U. 942'.034 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data England and Europe in the reign of Henry III ( 1216-1272) I edited by Bjorn K. U. Weiler. p. em. Papers presented at a conference on England and Europe in the Reign of Henry III (1216-1272) held at the University of Wales, Swansea in April 2000. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7546-0467-5 1. Great Britain--History--Henry III, 1216-1272--Congresses. 2. Henry III, King of England, 1207-1272--Congresses. 3. Great Britain--Foreign relations--Europe--Congresses. 4. Europe--Foreign relations--Great Britain --Congresses. 5. Europe--History--476-1492--Congresses. I. Weiler, Bjorn K.U. DA227 .E54 2002 942.03 '4--dc21 2001053602 Typeset by Manton Typesetters, Louth, Lincolnshire, UK. ISBN 13: 978-0-7546-0467-9 (hbk)

Contents List of Illustrations List of Contributors Preface List ofAbbreviations

vii ix xi

xiii

Introduction Bjorn Weiler Negotiating Anglo-Welsh Relations: Llywelyn the Great and Henry III Huw Pryce

13

2

Reconfiguring the Angevin Empire, 1224-1259 Robin Studd

31

3

Henry the Peaceable: Henry III, Alexander III and Royal Lordship in the British Isles, 1249-1272 Michael Brown

4

England and the Albigensian Crusade Nicholas Vincent

5

Henry III (1216-1272), Alfonso X of Castile (1252-1284) and the Crusading Plans of the Thirteenth Century (1 245-1272) Jose Manuel Rodriguez Garcia

6

The Monastic World Janet Burton

7

Henry III Through Foreign Eyes - Communication and Historical Writing in Thirteenth-Century Europe Bjorn Weiler

137

8

Royal Women of England and France in the Mid-Thirteenth Century: A Gendered Perspective Margaret Howell

163

9

Roger of Wendover and the Wars of Henry III, 1216- 1234 Sean McGlynn

43 67

99 121

183

England and Europe in the Reign of Henry Ill

vi

10

How to get on in England in the Thirteenth Century? Dietrich of Cologne, burgess of Stamford Natalie Fryde

207

11

Henry III's England and the Curia Christoph Egger

215

Index

233

List of Illustrations Map 1 Table 8.1

The Crusading World of Alfonso X The Genealogy of Royal Women

xvii 164

List of Contributors Michael Brown

Lecturer in Mediaeval Scottish History, University of St Andrews

Janet Burton

Lecturer in Medieval History, University of Wales, Lampeter

Christoph Egger

Assistant Professor, Institut fi.ir Osterreichische Geschichtsforschung, Universitat Wien

Natalie Fryde

Professor of Medieval History, Technische Universitat Darmstadt

Jose Manuel Rodriguez Garda

Doctoral Student, University of Madrid

Margaret Howell

Has retired to Oxford. Her publications include Eleanor of Provence. Queens hip in ThirteenthCentury England (Oxford, 1998) and Regalian Right in Medieval England (London, 1962)

Sean McGlynn

Doctoral Student, University of Wales, Cardiff

Huw Pryce

Senior Lecturer in Medieval Welsh History, University of Wales, Bangor

Ifor Rowlands

Lecturer in Medieval History, University of Wales, Swansea

Robin Studd

Lecturer in Medieval History, University of Keele

Nicholas Vincent

Professor of History, Canterbury Christ Church University College

Bjorn Weiler

Lecturer in Medieval History, University of Wales, Aberystwyth

Preface The following papers emerged from a conference on England and Europe in the Reign of Henry III ( 1216-1272), held at the University of Wales, Swansea, in April 2000. One of the speakers present at Swansea has opted out of publishing his contribution, and one essay has been commissioned separately. We would like to acknowledge the generous financial support received from the British Academy, the Royal Historical Society and the Department of History at Swansea. We would furthermore like to thank Jon Boniface, Jane Buse, Gail Edwards, Ashleigh Hayes, Eryl Heydeman, Tracey Knight, June Morgan, Chris Skerry, Bill Zajac and Janet Toft for their help, sweat and spare time, and the British Society of Pharmacologists for their food, of which some of the more fortunate of our participants inadvertently- but gratefully- partook. Last, though by no means least, we would like to thank the staff at Ashgate, in particular Claire Annals and Tom Gray, for their help and forbearance in bringing this book to completion. Thanks are also due to Jeanne Brady for her assistance with the manuscript.

List of Abbreviations AM Ann. Dunstable Ann. Tewkesbury ANS

ANW APS BT, Pen20Tr BT, RBH CAC

CAx CChR CD! CDS CLR CPL, i CPR CR CRR DAAx

Annates Monastici, ed. H.R. Luard (5 vols, 1864-69) Annates Prioratus de Dunstaplia A.D., 1-1279, in Annates Monastici, vol. iii Annales Monasterii de· Theokesberia, in Annates Monastici, vol. i Anglo-Norman Studies: Proceedings of the Battle Conference, ed. R.A. Brown (i-xi), M. Chibnall (xii-xvi), C. Harper-Bill (xvii-xxii), J. Gillingham (xxiii-) (Woodbridge, 1979-) Anglo-Norman Warfare: Studies in Late Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman Military Organization and Warfare, ed. M. Strickland (Woodbridge, 1992) Acts of Parliament of Scotland (12 vols, Edinburgh, 181475) Brut y Tywysogyon, or, The Chronicle of the Princes, Peniarth MS, 20 Version, transl. T. Jones (Cardiff, 1952) Brut y Tywysogyon, or, The Chronicle of the Princes, Red Book of Hergest Version, ed. T. Jones (1st edn, Cardiff, 1955; 2nd edn, 1973) Calendar of Ancient Correspondence Concerning Wales, ed. J.G. Edwards (Cardiff, 1935) Cr6nica de Alfonso X el Sabio, ed. M Gonzalez Jimenez, Real Academia Alfonso X el Sabio (Murcia, 1998) Calendar of the Charter Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office (London, 1903-27) Calendar of Documents relating to Ireland (London, 187586) Calendar of Documents relating to Scotland, eds J. Bain et al. (5 vols, Edinburgh, 1881-1986) Calendar of Liberate Rolls, (HMSO, 1916-) Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers Relating to Great Britain and Ireland: Papal Letters, i, A.D. 1198-1304, ed. W.H. Bliss (London, 1893) Calendar of Patent Rolls (HMSO, 1906-) Close Rolls of the Reign of Henry Ill (HMSO, 1902-75) Curia Regis Rolls (16 vols, HMSO, London, 1922-) Diplomatario Andaluz de Alfonso X, el Sabio, ed. M. Gonzalez Jimenez (Sevilla, 1991)

xiv

England and Europe in the Reign of Henry III

DPAiv DPCiv DPiiv DPUiv EHR Flores Historiarum Foedera

H HGML

HMSO JMH Joinville, 'Life of Saint Louis' MGH NS sep. ed.

ss

Paris, Chron. Majora PR

PRO RL Rot. Claus. Rot. Lit. Pat. RW

Saint-Pathus, Vie de

La documentaci6n pontificia de Alejandro IV ( 1254-1261), ed. Rodriguez de Lama, (Roma, 1976) La Documentaci6n Pontificia de Clemente IV (1265-68). Espaiia, ed. S. Dominguez Sanchez (Leon, 1996) La documentaci6n pontificia de Inocencio N ( 1241-1254), ed. A. Quintana Prieto (Roma, 1987) La documentaci6n pontificia de Urbano IV ( 1261-1264), ed. I. Rodriguez de Lama (Roma, 1980) English Historical Review Flores Historiarum, ed. H.G. Hewlett (3 vols, Rolls ser., 1886-89) Foedera, Conventiones, Litterae et Acta Publica, ed. T. Rymer, new edn, vol. i, eds A. Clark and F. Holbrooke (Record Commission, 1816) Handlist of the Acts of Native Welsh Rulers, 1132-1283, K.L. Maund (Cardiff, 1996) Histoire de Guillaume le Marechal, Comte de Striguil et de Pembroke, regent d'Angleterre de 1216 a 1219. Poeme franr;ais, ed. P. Meyer (3 vols, Societe de l'Histoire de France, Paris, 1891-1901) Her [or His] Majesty's Stationery Office Journal of Medieval History 'The Life of Saint Louis' in Joinville and Villehardouin, Chronicles of the Crusades, ed. and transl. M.R.B. Shaw (Harmondsworth, 1963) Monumenta Germaniae Historica Nova Series In usum Scholarum separatim editi Scriptores rerum Germanicarum infolio, 38 vols (Hanover et al., 1826-) Matthaei Parisiensis, Monachi Sancti Albani Chronica Majora, ed. H.R. Luard (7 vols, London, 1866-69) Patent Rolls of the Reign of Henry III Preserved in the Public Record Office A.D. 1216-1232 (2 vols, London, 1901-03) Public Record Office Royal and Other Historical Letters Illustrative of the Reign of Henry III from the Originals in the Public Record Office, ed. W.W. Shirley (2 vols, Rolls Series, London, 1962-66) Rotuli Litteratum Claus arum in Turri Londinensi Asservati A.D. 1204-A.D. 1227, ed. T.D. Hardy (2 vols, Record Commission, London, 1832-44) Rotuli Litterarum Patentium, ed. T.D. Hardy (London, 1835) (Roger of Wendover) Chronica Rogeri de Wendover liber qui dicitur Flores Historiarum, ed. H.G. Hewlett (3 vols, London, 1886-69) Guillaume de Saint-Pathus, Vie de Saint Louis, ed. H.F.

List of Abbreviations

Saint Louis TCE TRHS WB

XV

Delaborde (Paris, 1899) Thirteenth-Century England, eds P.R. Coss and S.D. Lloyd (i-v); M. Prestwich, R.H. Britnell and R. Frame (vi-) (Woodbridge, 1986-) Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (William the Breton) Ouevres de Rigord et de Guilaume le Breton, ed. H.F. Delaborde (2 vols, Societe de I'Histoire de France, Paris, 1882-85)

Battles

Crusader kings

X

~

.

~

0 Fez Marniquesh o ~ {

~ CLEMECEN

LITHUANIA

0

Kiev

RUSSIAN PRINCIPALITIES

Map 1 The Crusading World of Alfonso X from original 'Alfonso X's Crusade World (1245-85)' by Jose Manuel Rodriguez Garda

oJ

(7

'0 •

Ocean

' 1±1 MAROCCO

Aragonese mercenaries

Castilian mercenaries

Versus Christians

Atlantic

0

~

0

Crusades

'Spanish' military orders

gi

(fl

Crusade treaties

~

l.

1~54

124(}...41 St. Louis,

Teobald of Champagne. 1239-40 Richard of Cornwall,

5.

1270-71

Edward of England,

1269-70

4. Rest of the forces of Jaime I,

3.

2.

Introduction Bjorn Weiler

King Henry III, who reigned from 1216 to 1272, rarely features among the great monarchs of English history. In fact, his reign is frequently perceived as one of more or less continuous crisis, exacerbated by the personality of a king who was at best a pious fool and simpleton. Writing in the late nineteenth century, Bishop Stubbs, in his Constitutional History of England, set the tone for many modern commentators: 'Henry III's irresolution and impolicy had one good result; they incapacitated him from becoming a successful tyrant ... He reigned so long that the chance of such a consummation passed away ... .' 1 To R.F. Treharne even that was not redemption enough: 'He had not even the vices which can make a bad king a strong ruler ... though sometimes grandiose, his schemes were always either intrinsically silly, or far in excess of his resources.'2 Henry III, in short, was significant above all by default. He was a king, to paraphrase John Gillingham, who reigned, rather than one who ruled.3 He mattered, because of the sheer duration of his reign, and because his continuing incapacity to establish firm royal lordship paved the way for what was to become the glory of the Victorian constitution. At first sight, Henry III certainly does not cut a particularly impressive figure when compared to his successors as rulers of England. Unlike his son, Edward I, he does not lend himself to being elevated either to heroic status as forebear of a United Kingdom, or to be demonised as hammer of the Scots and oppressor of the Welsh. In fact, even to later medieval Scottish commentators his lack of initiative constituted his most laudable virtue.4 Unlike Edward III, he did not expand his family's possessions in France, but, in the Treaty of Paris ( 1259), conceded most of those territories lost by his father, and later to be reclaimed by his great-grandson. Many of the developments during his reign which continued to live beyond his own time had been initiated without, or in spite of, the king. The ' myth of Magna Carta', that is, its perception and utilisation of the Great Charter as a fundamental legal document regulating relations between king and subjects,5 is often understood to have been fashioned in the repeated clashes between the king and his barons, despite, as David Carpenter has shown,6 Henry's often rather strict adherence to the letter, if not always the spirit, of the 1215 settlement. In fact, the king's governance of his realm continued to be overshadowed by the momentous events of 12581267. In 1258, a group of barons had confronted the king at a parliament in Oxford and forced him to agree to a set of rules for reform, the so-called Provisions of Oxford. Henry's attempts to evade the promises made in 1258 eventually resulted in civil war, and in 1264-1265, he was held in captivity by his barons. When later English historians sought to trace the origins of parliament, they thus had to look to

2

England and Europe in the Reign of Henry Ill

the man who had imprisoned Henry III, and who was rumoured to have had designs on replacing him: Simon de Montfort. 7 In fact, Henry's imprisonment was perhaps one of the main factors contributing to the modern perception of his rule as incompetent and his reign as little more than a perennial crisis. Moreover, Henry III cuts a rather paltry figure in comparison to his European contemporaries. He certainly was no St Louis; unlike Frederick II, even his most fervent opponents would rarely have described him as Beast of the Apocalypse, and unlike Alfonso X of Castile he did not merit the eponym 'the Wise' by having drafted a corpus of laws which defined the legal structure of his dominions for several generations to come, and by commissioning some of the finest vernacular religious poetry of the Middle Ages. Although he was more successful than either of the latter two in maintaining the integrity of his realm and in ensuring the continuation of his dynasty, this again appears to have been above all the result of chance, rather than of the king's actions. When compared to the activities of Frederick, Louis and Alfonso - whose endeavours, after all, spanned Europe from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, from Armenia to Morocco - he at best appears to have been a middling sort of monarch. This was not for a lack of trying, though. However, his very endeavours in mainland Europe contributed, perhaps more than even his imprisonment at the hands of Simon de Montfort, to a general air of ineffectiveness which seems to permeate his reign, and they certainly provided ammunition to those who viewed his entanglement in European affairs as an expensive aberration. He never managed to regain the lands lost by his father, but was in addition deprived of Poitou in 1224. The expeditions he led to the mainland in 1230 and 1242/3 achieved little, and only served to strengthen Capetian control over what were once Plantagenet lands. Most notoriously, however, Henry's foreign undertakings and the 'grandiose ambitions' alluded to by R.F. Treharne, are exemplified by the so-called negotium Sicilie, the Sicilian Business, the king's attempt between 1254 and 1263 to install his son Edmund as king of Sicily. Neither Henry nor his son ever set foot in Sicily, the expenses incurred in pursuing the project alienated the king from his barons and clergy, and played a considerable part in creating the volatile political atmosphere which erupted in 1258.8 Similarly, his brother Richard's career as King of the Romans, that is, emperor-elect and ruler of Germany, has found little favour with modern observers. 9 In fact, to many of them, it was Henry's involvement in European affairs which signified, more than anything else, his incompetence and ineptitude as a ruler. 10 The king's reliance on foreign advisers and relatives, most notably his half-brothers, the Lusignans, and his wife's relatives, the Savoyards, further aggravated this. Until very recently, these had largely been portrayed as foreign adventurers, who exploited the king's simple-mindedness to enrich themselves and their followers. 11 The fact that they had also been prominent in Henry's activities on the wider international stage only served to underline a general perception of the king as weak, ineffectual and malleable. In short, the very links which Henry had cultivated with the aristocracies and kingdoms of the European mainland seem to have contributed to his humiliation in 1264-1265, and his subsequent portrayal as a stereotypical royal fool and simpleton. To some extent this was a view shared by Henry's contemporaries. Thirteenthcentury chroniclers repeatedly stressed Henry's patronage of his foreign relatives

Introduction

3

as a major blemish on the king's character, and the Savoyards and Lusignans were all too frequently portrayed as being the very root of the evils besetting the realm. In fact, to some observers, like the anonymous compiler of the Annals of Burton, the demands voiced by the barons at Oxford in 1258 were primarily concerned with the expulsion of these foreign favourites . 12 It was not, however, the king's involvement alone which helped to create a sense of hostility towards foreign influences. It is also in England, helped along by its status as a papal fief, that we find some of the most outspoken complaints about the inevitable side-effects of stronger papal control of the Latin Church, heralded by the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, that is, the curia's attempt to utilise the resources of various churches by appointing Roman officials as non-resident holders of church benefices.l3 Equally, monastic chroniclers in particular, who after all had to bear the brunt of providing the finances needed by the king to pursue his undertakings in France and Sicily, were quick to deride these as an expensive aberration, a squandering of funds and resources, and greeted news of setbacks for the king with a kind of bitter glee. 14 A perception of Henry III as a vainglorious fool and simpleton was firmly entrenched in contemporary writings, and thus appeared to justify an approach which largely considered Henry's role on the wider European stage as at best an expensive sideshow. This approach falls, however, short in several ways. It takes the few remnants of contemporary opinion still extant to paint a representative picture of the reality of thirteenth-century society, and it thereby fails to consider the far more complex picture which begins to emerge once we veer beyond the frustration, anger, envy and incomprehension which speaks to us from the narrative sources. In order to understand the structural features underlying the developments of Henry's reign (rather than analysing contemporary attitudes towards them), we must attempt as close an approximation of what contemporary reality may have been like as the fragmentation and inherently subjective nature of our sources will allow. The thirteenth century presents, after all, a period of sheer unprecedented interaction between the various component parts of Latin Christendom, and it did so on every level of contemporary life and society. The thirteenth century witnessed a much greater movement of goods, people and ideas than had been possible before. Moreover, although we can also detect an increasing tendency to define a particular group of people politically as well as ethnically (in the sense of a distinct natio - a group united by common customs, laws, languages, political affiliation, etc.) against outsiders -England being a classic example 15 but similar developments also to be observed in Hungary and Bohemia,l6 for instance - these attempts at a clearer differentiation between the various people of Europe had not yet reached the sophistication they were to undergo in the fourteenth century, nor did restrictions on movement equal those put in place then. Viewing any of the component parts of Europe during this period in isolation from the others would fail to grasp the complex reality of thirteenth-century life. As in so many cases, England, rather than being an exception to the rule, was in fact very much representative of these wider trends. To paraphrase F.M. Powicke, in the thirteenth century, more than ever before, England was a European land.l7 Henry III's most lasting monument, Westminster Abbey, had been built by French architects, and had been adorned with the works of Italian masons and German

4

England and Europe in the Reign of Henry Ill

goldsmiths. 18 When Henry's brother, Richard of Cornwall, oversaw one of the most wide-ranging attempts at mint reform in the Middle Ages, he drew on the expertise of minters from Brunswick and Goslar, !9 while Simon de Montfort's administration of Gascony to some extent relied on the services of knights provided by the duke of Brabant. 20 In Henri de Avranches the English court shared in the patronage of a poet, also active at that of Emperor Frederick 11,2 1 while Henry's Sicilian adventure relied to no small extent on the services of a Castilian prince.22 England was a land of immigrants, and the Lusignans and Savoyards were but the most commentedupon members of a much wider range of newcomers. In fact, as Natalie Fryde illustrates in her contribution to this volume, once these immigrants can be traced, they reveal themselves as highly respected, with little of the invective levelled at the king's and queen's relatives. It is also perhaps one of the inherent ironies that the Provisions of Oxford, to many observers primarily an attack on the king's foreign favourites, was led by Simon de Montfort, himself an upstart homo novus from France, and the queen's uncle, Piedro di Savoi. On every level of society, therefore, Henry III's realm was embedded within a broader intellectual, social, cultural, religious, political and economic nexus spanning most of contemporary Latin Europe. 23 Any investigation of Henry's undertakings, the events of and developments during his reign, which fails to consider this wider framework, presents an image that is disjointed, artificial and curiously parochia1. 24 It is within this context, furthermore, that Henry's reign as king _of England merits a more detailed study, and within which the essays in this volume ought to be placed. The king and his reign are of interest to us, because they provide both an opportunity to show how established views on the nature of English history, politics and society can be re-evaluated by adopting a broader, European approach, and because this, in turn, enables us to study a period which must rank as one of the most lively, truly 'international' of the European Middle Ages. In short, we hope not only to open up some new perspective on English history during the years 1216-1272, but would like to see this as providing a starting-point for a more detailed structural analysis of thirteenth-century Europe as a whole. By placing England within a broader context, it will also become possible to provide a sharper, more detailed focus on what constituted this wider framework, what brought about its existence, and what were its underlying structures and institutions. Henry's realm and this volume are but pieces in a much bigger puzzle. Emphasising the many features linking Henry's kingdom to its neighbours does, of course, not postulate that the manifold differences which continued to exist ought to be ignored. Rather than taking these to be an indication of a particular English Sonderweg, however, which clearly and from an early stage marked England out from any other region of contemporary Europe, they ought to be read as variations on a common theme. Furthermore, as Susan Reynolds has recently emphasised, an approach which juxtaposes England with an undifferentiated phenomenon called the 'Continent' or 'Europe' would be preposterous and shortsighted.25 Thirteenth-century Europeans shared a fundamental theoretical concept of what constituted - Latin, Christian and catholic - civilisation, and the basic premises of this concept were applied throughout the West. 26 At the same time, what these meant in practice, how fundamentally shared but abstract moral and ethical principles were transformed into contemporary reality, was often conditioned

Introduction

5

by the specific political, social, economic and even geographical circumstances of a particular region or realm. England was certainly different from France or Norway or Germany, but so were they from one another, and from Hungary, Castile, Aragon and Sicily, the Italian maritime cities or the Icelandic commonwealth. The 'Europe' in the title of this book does therefore not postulate a homogenous block of identical foreigners with whom Henry III and his subjects interacted, but provides convenient shorthand for the broader political, cultural and economic stage on which they acted. In many ways, thirteenth-century England provides an ideal starting-point from which to explore broader European developments and phenomena. This is largely due to the quality and quantity of the evidence available from England. In fact, one of the characteristics of Henry III's kingdom, and one which has given some weight to the traditional concept of a medieval English Sonderweg, was the highly sophisticated administrative apparatus available to the English king, resulting in a wealth of administrative materials matched only by the archives of the medieval crown of Aragon, and the - now lost - records of the Norman and Staufen administration of Sicily. Many of the phenomena to be explored in this volume were by no means confined to England, but because of the type of sources available in the context of Henry III's reign, it is possible to throw light on structures and institutions which, with variations, are likely to have existed in other parts of Europe as well, but which there are more difficult to trace. Most comparable materials for the medieval Empire, for instance, or the Capetian kingdom of France, are largely confined to charters, that is, official confirmations of rights, claims and previous privileges. They thus give an indication of the personnel involved in administering the realm, they throw important light on the hierarchical structure of contemporary aristocratic society, and they allow us to study relations between the king and his nobles. They do not, however, present a detailed picture of the day-today running of the king's administration in the way English records do. We can gauge how the king and his court lived and gain insights not only into the more abstract structures of high politics, but also the mundane aspects of everyday life, as exemplified, for instance, by the following mandate, issued by the king's steward in 1252: To the Sheriff of London: Contrabreve to let the keeper of the king's white bear, lately sent to him from Norway and [who] is now in the tower of London, have a muzzle and an iron chain to hold the bear when out of the water, and a long and strong cord to hold it when fishing in the Thames.27

In addition, however, we can trace the movements, actions and careers of the many middling and minor bureaucrats which made the kingdom function. This was not, of course, confined to the sphere of royal politics. In fact, as Janet Burton demonstrates in this volume, the sheer variety and wealth of the materials recorded by the king's bureaucrats also allow us to gain a new perspective on the general structuring of his realm. Moreover, although it would be mistaken to describe the English as an administrative - as opposed, for instance, to the French as a sacral monarchy,28 the bureaucratic sophistication at the centre of the realm also triggered a similar emphasis on collection and accumulating materials across the realm, as

6

England and Europe in the Reign of Henry Ill

illustrated in this volume by Christoph Egger's essay. Second, this also allows us new insights into developments in other parts of Europe. We know, for instance, of dealings between King Fernando of Castile and Emperor Frederick II in 1242, because the Castilian envoys had to cross Gascony, with their sojourn being duly recorded in the English records.29 Naturally, this does not give us a complete picture of the reality of the thirteenth century, but it highlights aspects which otherwise would probably never have emerged. In fact, it does thereby complement some of the traditional approaches taken, strengthening as well as being strengthened when combined with an emphasis on the literary structure and form of narrative sources, as exemplified here by Sean McGlynn's and Bjorn Weiler's essays. It may thus help to open up new avenues to explore on a comparative basis, and England in the reign of Henry III could serve not only as an example for wider European trends, but might also provide a basis from which to embark on this broader and more wide-ranging exploration. This also defines what this collection of essays is hoping to achieve. It is informed by the belief, that, in order to understand more fully the society, culture and political history of medieval England, this must be done within a broader European framework.JO As such it forms part of a recent trend in English medieval historical scholarship. In the context of the thirteenth century, Michael Clanchy was the first to formulate this need in 1968 in an article on Henry III's policy in relation to his magnates by drawing comparisons with Louis IX, Frederick II and Alfonso of Castile.31 This he followed in 1983 with a detailed sketch of Henry's reign, which formulated, perhaps most succinctly so far, the need for an approach which sought to understand the king and his undertakings by looking beyond his English affairs,32 In recent years this call has become more widespread. Rees Davies, J. Beverley Smith and Robin Frame, for instance, have begun to reevaluate Henry's activities in Wales and lreland,3 3 and have pointed to a much more concerted, well-organised and aggressive stance than Henry III has often been credited for (or accused of). Similarly, Michael Brown's essay in this volume offers a more varied and multi-faceted view of Henry's undertakings in Scotland. Rather than being a period of inactivity and blunders, Henry III formulated the policies and instituted the political mechanisms which were later to be exploited by his son, Edward I. Huw Ridgeway and Nicholas Vincent have turned their attention to those foreign favourites of King John's and Henry's reign, so frequently maligned by contemporary chroniclers.34 As a result, we receive not only a more complex picture of thirteenth-century English political history and society, but we are also able to gauge the degree to which these men formed part of a wider European network of contacts, interests and ideas. This broader context was also an issue at the centre of Margaret Howell's recent evaluation of Henry's queen, Eleanor ofProvence,35 while Simon Lloyd has pointed to the broader international context of Henry's foreign endeavours.36 On an economic level, Terry Lloyd, Joseph P. Huffman and Natalie Pryde have highlighted the institutional and personal contacts which linked England to its European neighbours.3 7 Perhaps one of the most striking results of this renewed interest in the European dimension of English history has been the gradual emergence of what Nicholas Vincent, in this volume, calls the history of the Anglo-European thirteenth century. Rather than being considered a sideshow to the events enacted upon the English stage,

Introduction

7

these wider networks, connections and contacts form an integral part of our understanding of medieval English society. At the same time, many of these studies still take England as their primary focus. This is also where the essays assembled here, while very much part of this reevaluation of English history, also seek to explore new ground. Our emphasis is as much- if not more so- on England's place within contemporary Europe, as it is on the significance of Europe for thirteenth-century England. The actions and concerns of Henry III, his subjects and neighbours are taken to be representative of wider developments, in evidence across contemporary Latin Europe. By exploring how the king of England and his people interacted with their neighbours, by investigating the institutions and structures through which these exchanges were facilitated, and by outlining what this could mean for the individuals involved, we hope to contribute towards a better understanding of the factors which shaped thirteenth-century Europe, and to highlight the mechanisms which- despite numerous variations- influenced and defined its constituent parts. It would be presumptuous to claim that this collection of essays offers a complete overview of such a complex and wide-ranging topic. Rather, what we present here is an attempt to highlight some of the structures, attitudes and networks which made possible this exchange of ideas, news, people and goods, and the political processes which they both reflected and formed. Equally, the essays assembled here do not necessarily centre on Henry III, but aim to explore the doings of his subjects as much as those of the king. None the less, by adopting this approach, it may also be possible to reassess the actions and undertakings of Henry III, and his place on the contemporary European stage. After all, it may be possible to reach a very different assessment of the king and his actions if put in relation to the actions of his peers, neighbours and subjects, and the factors which conditioned their undertakings as much as his own. This volume can be separated into four, broad, overlapping sections. The first, comprising papers by Huw Pryce, Robin Studd, Michael Brown and Nicholas Vincent, deals with the political dimension of contacts between England and its neighbours. Huw Pryce and Robin Studd explore the political mechanisms by which territorial control could be asserted in the face of an over-mighty and hostile neighbour, and thereby also shed important light on the attitudes of contemporaries towards English rule in Gascony and Wales respectively. In Gascony, Henry III acted the weaker part, and had to secure a precarious hold over a politically fragmented territory, eagerly eyed by his Capetian neighbours. Robin Studd uses this to paint a subtle picture of the pressures on and the mechanisms of Plantagenet control in Gascony. In Wales, on the other hand, it was Llywelyn the Great who had to secure his independence against English dominance, and Huw Pryce shows how he did so, at least in part, by adopting the very mechanisms of English control. Michael Brown and Nicholas Vincent, in turn, focus on the wider field of thirteenthcentury diplomacy and what one may term international politics. Michael Brown paints not only a much more varied and complex picture of Henry's relations with Scotland than we have hitherto been accustomed to, but also uses this to highlight how the structures and mechanisms, initially exploited by Henry III to assert a certain degree of control over his northern neighbours, were used by the Scottish aristocracy to assert their independence from their own as well as the English king

8

England and Europe in the Reign of Henry Ill

-with intriguing parallels to developments in Wales. He also points out that AngloScottish relations were embedded within a broader European context, and can only be properly understood if this background -ranging from Norway and France to Ireland and Castile - is taken into account. Similarly, Nicholas Vincent stresses to the significance which events in Languedoc had for Plantagenet affairs from c. 11501250, and provides one of the most important examples for an approach which extends the history of English affairs to include all the lands under the - at least nominal -authority of the king of the English. The questions thus explored highlight structures and problems which are also evident, for instance, in dealings between the kings of Navarre and counts of Champagne with the French crown; they reflect challenges facing the imperial administration of Burgundy, and they focus on developments which can also be observed, for instance, in relations between the kings of Castile and Portugal. The second group of papers, by Jose Manuel Rodriguez Garda, Janet Burton and Bjorn Weiler, looks more specifically at some of the structures and institutions which facilitated political, cultural and religious exchange. Jose Manuel Rodriguez Garda's study of the crusading plans of Henry III and King Alfonso X of Castile provides the first detailed case study of an institutional and ideological framework within which relations between European rulers were increasingly conducted in the thirteenth century, that is, campaigns undertaken for, or in support of (a difference, elucidated by Jose Garda's paper), the defence of Christian territories in Syria and Palestine. This, in turn, highlights problems of political power, its legitimisation and enforcement, also evident in Welsh or Scottish dealings with England, or Henry III's administration of Gascony. Janet Burton uses the development of the Cistercians in England and Wales to trace a finely spun network of contacts across the English Channel, and between the various parts of the British Isles. In addition, Dr Burton also highlights some of the difficulties this posed to monastic communities - and especially to truly trans-regnal institutions like the Cistercians -in an era of increasing hostility towards the 'other' . Moreover, her study of Cistercian networks in England, France and Wales provides important insights into the structure of one of those institutions which were frequently at the heart of cultural, political and economic interaction in the European Middle Ages. Bjorn Weiler takes the perception of Henry III and the barons' war in non-English sources as a starting-point to outline the paths and avenues along which news could travel and be disseminated in the thirteenth century, and what this in turn tells us about the nature of historical writing in medieval Europe. Margaret Howell's study on royal women and Sean McGlynn 's analysis of Roger of Wendover constitute the third group of essays, which uses England during Henry 's reign to illustrate some of the general parameters within which thirteenthcentury European society was structured. Margaret Howell explores the role and function of royal women. Though focusing on England, her analysis none the less points to phenomena in evidence across Latin Christendom, and thus enables us to challenge some of the perceived ideas concerning, for instance, the interrelation of power and gender. Sean McGlynn explores the nature of warfare, as recorded in the writings of Roger of Wendover. This, in turn, allows for a more detailed study of an emerging 'national' consciousness, in particular as regards notions of 'English' or 'French' military tactics, thereby highlighting developments also referred to by Janet Burton and Huw Pryce.

Introduction

9

Finally, Christoph Egger and Natalie Fryde provide what might best be termed the 'individual dimension' by looking at some of the people who profited from and who formed this broader international framework. Natalie Fryde presents a study ofTerricus de Colonia, a German merchant who settled in Stamford in Lincolnshire, and whose career may thus be taken as illustrative for a much broader and considerably wider phenomenon than it has often been given credit for. Christoph Egger, in tum, investigates the career of that much-hated phenomenon, the curial official who was paid for from the revenues of English churches. This allows not only for a detailed study of the ways and means by which papal diplomacy was conducted, in England as much as elsewhere, and of the interrelationship between royal diplomacy and the administrative structure of the Roman court, but it also undermines some of the perceived wisdoms concerning the relationship between absentee holders of English benefices and those who provided their income. As a whole, the essays in this volume seek to highlight the gains to be made for our understanding of English history by placing it within its broader European cultural, political, economic and social context. In addition, however, the history of thirteenth-century England also becomes a means by which these general structures can be identified and explored. Taking a broader European perspective on the history of medieval England not only broadens our knowledge of English affairs, but in turn also allows us to gain a deeper and better understanding of what constituted Europe in the thirteenth century. This book is thus intended both as providing a spotlight on current trends in historical research on medieval England, as well as highlighting areas for future research. We hope above all that we will engender further debate, and give renewed impetus to a broader, more 'international' approach towards the history not only of England, but the other regions, too, which constituted medieval Europe.

Notes

2 3 4 5 6 7 8

W. Stubbs, The Constitutional History of England, 3 vols, 6th edn (Oxford, 1903) ii, 105. R.F. Treharne, The Baronial Plan of Reform, 1258- 1263 (Manchester, 1932; repr. 1971 ), 49-50. J. Gillingham, Richard I (Yale and London, 1999), l. Cf. the essays by Michael Brown and Bjorn Weiler in this volume. Below, 43-66 and 137-63. J.C. Holt, Magna Carta, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 1992), 378-405. D.A. Carpenter, 'Chancellor Ralph de Neville and Plans of Political Reform' , TCE ii, 69-80; idem, 'Justice and Jurisdiction under King John and King Henry III', in his: The Reign of Henry lll (London, 1996), 17-44. Stubbs, Constitutional History, ii, 103-4. Cf. also, for a critical perspective, D.A. Carpenter, 'The Beginnings of Parliament' in The Reign, 381-408. Treharne, The Baronial Plan, 51; D.A. Carpenter, 'The Plantagenet Kings' , in: The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 5, c. 1198- c. 1300, ed. D. Abulafia (Cambridge, 1999), 314-57 at 335; A. Wachtel, 'Die sizilische Thronkandidatur des Prinzen Edmund von England', Deutsches Archiv fur Geschichte des Mittelalters 4 (1940), 98-178; B. Weiler, 'Henry III and the Sicilian Business: a Reinterpretation', Historical Research 74 (2001), 127-50.

10 9 10 11 12 13 14

15 16

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

29 30 31 32 33

England and Europe in the Reign of Henry III N. Denholm-Young, Richard of Cornwall (Oxford, 1947), 86-97; B. Weiler, 'Image and Reality in Richard of Cornwall's German Career', EHR 113 (1998), 1111-42 for a quick overview. Treharne, Baronial Plan, 52. Harold S. Snellgrove, The Lusignans in England 1247-1258 (Albuquerque, 1947). AM, i, 438. Cf. Christoph Egger's contribution to this volume, below, 215-32. The most outspoken example for this, and perhaps representative of more widespread disillusionment with the king's foreign endeavours, is Matthew Paris. Cf. B. Weiler, 'Matthew Paris, Richard of Cornwall's Candidacy for the German Throne, and the Sicilian Business', JMH 26 (2000), 71-93. Cf. M.T. Clanchy, England and Its Rulers, 1066-1272 (London, 1983), 241-62 for the best modern discussion. Simon de Keza, Gesta Hungarorum. The Deeds of the Hungarians, ed. and trans. L. Veszpremy and F. Schaer, with a study by J. SzUcs (Budapest, 1999), 159-76; L.E. Scales, 'At the margins of community: Germans in pre-Hussite Bohemia', TRHS Sixth Series 9 (1999), 327-52. F.M. Powicke, King Henry 11l and the Lord Edward. The Community of the Realm in the Thirteenth Century, 2 vols (Oxford, 1947), 156. P. Binski, Westminster Abbey and the Plantagenets. Kingship and the Representation of Power (New Haven, CT and London, 1995), 10-51. CLR 1245-51, 194. 302; CR 1247-51, 316; also CPR 1247-58,21. Paris, Chron. Maiora, v, 210. Most recently: K. Bund, 'Studien zu Magister Heinrich von Avranches: I. Zur kiinftigen Edition seiner Werke', Deutsches Archiv fur Erforschung des Mittelalters 56 (2000). 127-69. On Henry of Castile, cf. the essay by Jose Manuel Rodriguez Garcia in this volume, below, 99-120. Many more examples can be found in D. Matthew, The English People and the Community of Europe in the Thirteenth Century (Reading, 1997). This point has also recently been emphasised by Carpenter, 'Plantagenet Kings', 31718. S. Reynolds, 'How different was England in the Thirteenth Century?', TCE vii, 1-16. See also the points made by R.J. Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change, 950-1350 (London, 1993); S. Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe 900-1300 (Oxford, 1984). CLR 1251-60, 84. G. Koziol, 'England, France, and the problem of sacrality in twelfth-century ritual', in: Cultures of Power. Lordship, Status and Process in Twelfth-Century Europe, ed. T.N. Bisson (Philadelphia, PA, 1995), 124-48; N. Vincent, 'Conclusion', in: Noblesses de l'espace Plantagenet (1154-1224). Table ronde tenue a Poitiers le 13 mai 2000, ed. Martin Aurell (Poitiers, 2001), 207-14. CPR 1232-47, 330, 350, 398. This approach has recently been popularised by N. Davies, The Isles (London, 1999). M.T. Clanchy, 'Did Henry III have a policy?', History 53 (1968), 203-16. Clanchy, England, 230-5 in the specific context of Henry's endeavours on the broader political stage of thirteenth century Europe. R.R. Davies, The Age of Conquest: Wales 1063-1415 (originally published as Conquest, Coexistence and Change: Wales 1063-1415, Oxford, 1987; repr., Oxford, 1991); R. Frame, The Political Development of the British Isles, 1100-1400 (Oxford, 1990); 'Ireland and the Barons' War', TCE i (1985), 158-67; 'King Henry III and Ireland: the

Introduction

11

shaping of a peripheral lordship', TCE iii (1991), 179-202; J.B. Smith, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd: Prince ofWa/es (Cardiff, 1998). 34 H. Ridgeway, 'Foreign favourites and Henry III's problems of patronage, 1247-58 ' , EHR 104 (1989), 590-610; 'William de Valence and his familiares, 1247-72', Historical Research 65 (1992), 239-57; N. Vincent, Peter des Roches: An Alien in English Politics, 1205-1238 (Cambridge, 1996). 35 M. Howell, Eleanor of Provence: Queenship in Thirteenth-Century England (Oxford, 1998). 36 S.D. Lloyd, English Society and the Crusade 1216-1307 (Oxford, 1988); 'King Henry III, the crusade and the Mediterranean', in: England and her Neighbours 1066-1453: Essays in honour of Pierre Chaplais, eds M. Jones and M. Vale (London, 1989), 9737

119. T.H . Lloyd, England and the German Hanse, 1157-/6/l (Cambridge, 1991); J.P.

Huffman, Family, Commerce and Religion in London and Cologne. Anglo-German Emigrants c.1 000-c. 1300 (Cambridge, 1998); N. Fry de, Ein mittelalterlicher deutscher Grossunternehmer: Terricus Teutonicus de Colonia in England, 1217-1257 (Stuttgart, 1997).

Chapter 1

Negotiating Anglo-Welsh Relations: Llywelyn the Great and Henry III Huw Pryce

The spring of 1230 was a critical time in the career of Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, the ruler of Gwynedd in north-west Wales traditionally known as Llywelyn the Great. At Easter, which fell on 7 April, William de Braose, the young Marcher lord of Brecon and Builth, was discovered in the prince's chamber with Llywelyn's wife, Joan, illegitimate daughter of King John and thus a half-sister to Henry III. About three weeks later, on 2 May, William was hanged at Crogen, a princely estate near BaJa, reportedly before a crowd of over 800 onlookers, following his condemnation by Llywelyn's magnates who judged that he had deceitfully brought dishonour upon the prince. 1 As far as is known, the execution did not elicit any protest from the royal government, which continued its efforts to arrange a meeting with Llywelyn to agree a further truce or peace (Henry himself had arrived at Saint-Malo in Brittany the day after William was hanged).2 Whatever the justification for the sentence in terms of Welsh custom, the royal authorities appear to have accepted that the matter fell under Llywelyn's jurisdiction, referring tactfully in August 1230 to the 'misfortune' which had befallen William.3 The events which unfolded following the discovery of William de Braose's affair with Joan highlight the complexity of Anglo-Welsh relations during Llywelyn's reign. On the one hand, the hanging of de Braose can be seen as simply a dramatic instance of the deep hostility that so often characterized relations between the Welsh and the Marchers: according to the abbot of Vaudy in his report to the chancellor, Ralph de Neville, the enemies of the Braoses were summoned especially to attend the execution. 4 It may well be that the severity of the sentence reflected the hatred of the Braose family among some leading Welsh families, especially in the south, and that we should not dismiss as mere rhetoric the prince's claim, in letters to William de Braose's widow, Eva, and her brother, William Marshal II, earl of Pembroke, that he had little choice but to acquiesce in his magnates' judgement. At the same time, it is quite possible that Llywelyn, irrespective of whether he succumbed to a desire for personal revenge, welcomed the prospect of the fragmentation of a great Marcher lordship among William's heiresses, one of whom was engaged to marry his son and designated successor, Dafydd.5 Certainly the crisis brings into sharp focus the importance of marital alliances as one of the means whereby, to a greater extent than any previous native Welsh ruler, Llywelyn forged close links between Gwynedd and both England and the lordships of the Welsh March. His own marriage to Joan in 1205 was a key stage in the

14

England and Europe in the Reign of Henry Ill

consolidation of his power as prince of Gwynedd, reflecting his success in securing the support of the English crown as well as the importance he attached to maintaining that support. No doubt Joan's presence in Gwynedd helped to open the principality to Anglo-French influences, perhaps including the adoption of some French loanwords attested in Welsh law-texts composed in the region by the mid-thirteenth century. 6 Llywelyn ensured in tum that all his children (except Gruffudd) were married into leading Marcher families, thereby drawing his family into a network of aristocratic and royal connections extending into England, Scotland and Ireland. 7 The political advantages of such matches were particularly clear in the proposed marriage between Dafydd, Llywelyn's designated successor since 1220, and Isabella de Braose. This was negotiated as one of the terms of the release of her father, William, following his capture by Llywelyn in Hemy III's disastrous Ceri campaign in 1228, and included the crucial agreement that the lordship of Builth should be given as her dowry, a concession that held out the prospect of extending the authority of Gwynedd into mid-Wales. 8 Llywelyn was determined that William's execution should not jeopardize this valuable alliance and, despite the anger of Eva de Braose, Dafydd's marriage to Isabella, still a minor, went ahead (though the transfer of Builth was disputed by the crown). 9 Nor did the prince allow the events of the spring of 1230 to cause irreparable damage to his own marriage: Joan was released from imprisonment the following year and is found negotiating again on her husband's behalf in 1232.10 Aristocratic marriages were only one facet of Welsh connections with England and the English societies of the March. These connections grew more numerous in the thirteenth century than before and form an important backdrop to the political relations which are the main concern of this paper. 11 Gerald of Wales had noted the dependence of the Welsh on imports from England of iron, cloth, salt and corn, and Llywelyn employed English or French merchants to procure the necessities of courtly life: two of these merchants, Simon le Petit and Hemy Long, were granted licences in 1227 to enter England and return with wine and other merchandise.l2 Other links were created through the Church. The bishops of Bangor and St Asaph attended ecclesiastical councils and episcopal consecrations in England, and Welsh clerics were educated in the English schools and sometimes also held benefices in England: Hywel ap Gruffudd of Bromfield, parson of Myddle in Shropshire, was granted permission by Hemy III in 1232 to remain 'in the king's land in the schools' notwithstanding the disputes between the king and Llywelyn.l3 Particularly interesting in the context of the present discussion is Llywelyn's clerk, Instructus, one of probably at least two individuals bearing this name, who was granted money by Hemy III in 1222 to keep him in the schools.l4 Instructus acted in both a legal and a diplomatic capacity for the prince, but was also, it seems, employed by the king: Joan, in her sole surviving letter, sought to allay Henry's suspicions concerning Instructus, whom she described as 'your and my lord's [Llywelyn's] clerk', adding that he was no less faithful to the king by faithfully carrying out the prince's business, just as he faithfully carried out that of the king in dealing with Llywelyn. 15 How typical Instructus was of the prince's clerks is difficult to tell, but he illustrates how an individual's career could transcend the Anglo-Welsh border, making him well placed to negotiate Anglo-Welsh relations. This paper will explore, then, some of the issues raised by the case of a Welsh ruler who sought, on the one hand, to associate his dynasty and principality more

Negotiating Anglo-Welsh Relations

15

closely with English and Marcher aristocratic society and culture and, on the other, to establish a wide hegemony over Wales which would involve significantly reducing the English crown's authority in the country. Historians of Wales, understandably much interested in attempts by Llywelyn and other medieval Welsh rulers to give political expression to Welsh national identity, have tended to focus on the latter aspect of the prince's relations with England. For J.E. Lloyd, the father of modern Welsh historiography, in his History of Wales from the Earliest Times to the Edwardian Conquest, first published in 1911, Llywelyn stood out as a great national hero: 'no man ever made better or more judicious use of the native force of the Welsh people for adequate national ends; his patriotic statesmanship will always entitle him to wear the proud style of Llywelyn the Great.' 16 However, this upbeat picture has been dented in several respects by more recent work, notably in an article by Gwyn A. Williams in the early 1960s which underlined the fragility of the prince's political achievement, and also by J. Beverley Smith, who has emphasized Llywelyn's failure to secure recognition from the crown of his wider hegemony beyond Gwynedd. 17 As I shall argue, there is much to commend this shift towards a more cautious assessment of what Llywelyn achieved. At the same time, though, it is important to remember that the prince's relations with England belonged to the wider context of interaction and integration already mentioned. It should be stressed that what follows is not intended as a comprehensive account of Henry III's relations with Wales, even in the period down to Llywelyn 's death in 1240, a subject already well covered in its military and diplomatic aspects by previous scholars.18 Still less will it look at the later chapters of the king's relations with Wales, which, from an English perspective, arguably have a greater claim to attention than the period under consideration here, for it was in the 1240s and 1250s that Henry embarked on a policy of royal assertiveness in both the March and native Wales or pura Wallia that was unparalleled, as Rees Davies has observed, since the days of Henry 1. 19 Yet even then the king failed to prevent the ascendancy in Wales from 1256 of Llywelyn ap Iorwerth's grandson, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd (d. 1282), whose relations with the king have been examined in detail by J. Beverley Smith in his excellent recent biography of that prince. 20 Scrutiny of Henry's credentials as an early architect of devolution, as represented by the Treaty of Montgomery of 1267, thus falls outside the scope of the present discussion. My aim, rather, is to offer a Welsh perspective on Anglo-Welsh relations in the time of Llywelyn ap Iorwerth and Henry III. More particularly, the paper draws on work undertaken in preparing an edition of the acts issued by twelfth- and thirteenthcentury Welsh rulers, together with peace agreements or truces to which they subscribed (including those extant only in royal letters patent). 21 Forty-seven such documents survive in Llywelyn's name, and a further dozen are known from mentions in other sources. Most of these acts are authentic, though, as Charles Insley has recently demonstrated, this is not the case with the two charters allegedly issued by the prince in favour of the Cistercian abbey of Aberconwy, dated at the abbey on 7 January 1199. 22 The charters, letters and agreements are, of course, further testimony to the impact on Wales of Anglo-French or English culture, for the documents show few distinctively Welsh characteristics, conforming rather to diplomatic forms commonly used in England.23

16

England and Europe in the Reign of Henry Ill

The political background can be sketched quickly. In important respects, as Ifor Rowlands has recently reminded us, King John was the making of Llywelyn.24 First, the king, after some initial misgivings in 1199, had decided by 1201 to recognize Llywelyn as the rightful successor to the principality of Gwynedd.25 This was followed, in 1204, by the prince's betrothal to the king's illegitimate daughter, Joan (the marriage probably took place in 1205), who brought as her marriage portion the manor of Ellesmere in Shropshire, previously held by Llywelyn's uncle, Dafydd ab Owain (d. 1203), as the marriage portion of his wife, Emma of Anjou, a half-sister of Henry II. This royal support was important to Llywelyn because it eliminated the threat that the king would back any of his rivals, and the marriage served to elevate his status above that of other Welsh lords, both in Gwynedd and beyond. True, by 1211 the king had a change of heart, fearing that his son-in-law had become too powerful, and launched a blisteringly effective campaign against Gwynedd: Joan was sent to her father by the prince to seek terms of peace. The price of that peace was heavy for Llywelyn, as we shall see; but viewed in a longer perspective, the king's determination to tighten his grip on Wales, signalled by his orders for an extensive programme of castle building, turned to Llywelyn's advantage. Thus it was that Llywelyn was able, from 1212 onwards, to rally the other Welsh lords to his side and lead a series of successful campaigns that resulted in his controlling more of Wales by John's death in 1216 than any Welsh ruler since the time of Gruffudd ap Llywelyn in the eleventh century. Henry III was thus faced with a Welsh brother-in-law, over thirty years his senior, who had not only achieved a position of unchallenged predominance in his patrimonial principality of Gwynedd but established himself at the head of a military confederation which had conquered substantial swathes of territory in midand south Wales. How far did Llywelyn succeed in obtaining the crown's recognition of this predominance? In attempting to answer this question let us begin by considering the agreements drawn up between the prince and the king. One point worth emphasizing here is that Llywelyn never succeeded in obtaining a comprehensive treaty with the king defining his rights both within Wales and in relation to the English crown. The so-called Treaty of Worcester consists of three agreements made in March 1218.26 On the face of it, Llywelyn did well out of his negotiations with the regency government, and the agreements at Worcester have been seen as offering recognition of the paramount position he had achieved in Wales since he had begun leading a confederation of native rulers against royal and Marcher castles and lands in 1212.27 All three agreements are extant as letters patent issued by Llywelyn and preserved in chancery enrolments; the first two are undated, but have identical witness lists and look as though they were issued at the same time, perhaps shortly before the third, which has a slightly different witness list, and is dated at Worcester on 16 March. (The prince had been summoned to appear at Worcester by 11 March, and the regent, William Marshal, was present there from 12 to 17 March inclusive.)28 The first document confirmed, but also limited, the prince's seizure of southern Powys, stating that Llywelyn had been granted custody of the territory by the papal legate, Guala, during the minority of the heirs of its erstwhile ruler, Gwenwynwyn ab Owain, who had died in exile in 1216. The second document dealt with two key issues: Llywelyn promised, first, to hand over to the legate the royal castles of

Negotiating Anglo-Welsh Relations

17

Cardigan and Carmarthen as well as lands and castles of the king's adherents in south Wales and, second, to try to ensure that all the magnates of Wales would do homage and fealty to the king. He also undertook not to receive any enemy of the king in Wales. The final document suggests that a compromise was agreed on the first of those points: Llywelyn received the castles of Cardigan and Carmarthen in custody from Guala during the king's minority, and promised to hold the king's court in the castles and their lands and to uphold the king's peace therein. As Llywelyn already occupied both southern Powys and much of south Wales, including Cardigan and Carmarthen, it could be argued that these agreements merely served to put a de iure gloss on de facto power, and reflected the weak position of the crown in the face of Llywelyn's huge territorial gains in Wales. Yet, as Beverley Smith has recently argued, challenging the positive assessments offered by J.E. Lloyd and other scholars, it is likely that the agreements fell far short of the prince's expectations. 29 True, they differed greatly from the humiliating charter of submission to John in 1211, when Llywelyn was forced to cede Gwynedd east of the river Conwy and even agreed that the rest of his principality should escheat to the crown if an heir was not born to him by his wife, Joan- concessions annulled by the return of that and other Welsh charters of submission which was agreed in Magna Carta.30 In 1218, Llywelyn's paramount position among the Welsh rulers was indubitably recognized; moreover, the prince retained his control of southern Powys, either directly or through his son, until his death in 1240. Yet in other respects the agreements underlined Llywelyn's subordination to the crown and the curbing of his hegemonic ambitions; they did not confirm him in all his conquests, as Lloyd asserted. Far from gaining the homages of the other native rulers, the prince was made responsible for ensuring that they did homage to the king; and in Cardigan and Carmarthen, he accepted that his authority was delegated by the crown - acknowledging that he was the king's bailiff, no less - and could be revoked. In fact, some of the Welsh lords, especially in the south, were reluctant to do homage to Henry, as the royal chancery complained later in 1218, while Cardigan and Carmarthen were lost by the Welsh as a result of William Marshal II's campaign in 1223.31 That Llywelyn sought recognition of a more exalted status than that conceded him in 1218 is shown by his subsequent actions and statements. As David Carpenter has observed, in several respects 'Llywelyn was to advance claims at variance with the treaty, which thus served to define rather than dull his vaulting ambition' .32 This became evident as early as May 1220, when the prince wrote to the legate Pandulf rejecting the crown's demand that he transfer the land of Maelienydd (in mid-Wales) to the king's use, and upholding the rights of its native lords against Hugh Mortimer of Wigmore. Llywelyn took the opportunity here to assert that the homages of those lords in fact belonged to his principatus, while conceding that resolution of the issue should be postponed until the king reached his majority. Llywelyn likewise adumbrated the notion of a wider Welsh polity at the end of the letter, when he assured Pandulf 'that there is, so we believe, no one else in the world who wishes more than us to see to the honour and benefit of the lord king in justice and equity according to the status of Wales (secundum statum Wallie)' .33 It is very likely that Llywelyn had sought recognition of his wider supremacy in Wales in his talks with the legate and royal council at Shrewsbury a week or so

18

England and Europe in the Reign of Henry Ill

earlier on 5 May, a meeting which resulted in the king's acceptance of Dafydd as the prince's heir, but clearly no such recognition had been forthcoming.34 The prince similarly sought to advance a general constitutional claim in response to a specific royal demand in July 1224, when the king forbade him to aid the rebel Falkes de Breaute, who had briefly fled to Llywelyn's land. Not only did Llywelyn defend the rebel but he went on to make the sweeping assertion that he had as much right as the king of Scotland to receive outlaws from England with impunity, thereby effectively reneging on his commitment at Worcester not to receive the king's enemies.35 The practical import of this statement should not be overstated. Falkes was with Llywelyn for only a matter of hours, and the prince's authority in Wales was of course not really commensurate with that of King Alexander II (whose cousin, John of Scotland, had become Llywelyn's son-in-law two years previously).36 But the comparison with Scotland is nevertheless a significant indication of the prince's political aspirations, and reflects his readiness to use written communications with the crown as a means of talking up his status. The same is true of the change in the title adopted by Llywelyn in charters and letters from 'prince of North Wales' to 'prince of Aberffraw and lord of Snowdon'. Though this might seem to signal a diminution of status, linking the prince merely to a court on Anglesey and the mountainous heartland of Gwynedd rather than the whole of Gwynedd or North Wales, it was in fact quite the opposite, as we shall see. When this new title was first adopted is uncertain. The earliest dated document containing it is a charter dated at Ruthin on 18 November 1225 in favour of the Hospitallers of St John at Dolgynwal (Y sbyty Ifan) and extant in an inspeximus of Edward II issued in December 1316. 37 However, this charter is of questionable authenticity. Admittedly, the witness list is compatible with the date given. In addition, determining the authenticity of the charter on the basis of its diplomatic is difficult, as only eleven other charters ofL!ywelyn's survive with which to compare it, none of which is dated or datable to 1225.38 The considerable variety exhibited by the diplomatic of these charters suggests that the prince's clerks did not try to impose a strong degree of uniformity and points in at least some cases to the influence of beneficiary drafting.39 Thus the inclusion in the Dolgynwal charter of a preamble, while a very rare feature in the surviving acts of Welsh rulers of this period, does not necessarily condemn it as spurious; indeed, there are two other examples (albeit each of them different from this one) among Llywelyn's charters.40 Nevertheless, the charter's dating clause gives cause for suspicion: this dates the document by the king's regnal year and also seems to allude to his minority by describing Henry as iunior, an extremely unusual usage. 41 It seems strange that Llywelyn should have combined a new, assertive style with a dating clause that emphasized the authority of Henry III, even if the king's status was somewhat qualified by the adjective iunior. True, two of Llywelyn's letters patent announcing agreements with, or concessions to, the king are likewise dated by the king's regnal year; 42 and a charter for Strata Marcella abbey issued in 1191 by Gwenwynwyn ab Owain (d. 1216), ruler of southern Powys, combines the year of the incarnation with Richard I's regnal year. 43 In addition, it may be that the Hospitallers of Dolgynwal felt that their title to Ellesmere church would be more secure from potential challenge if the charter they might have to produce before a royal court was dated by Henry's regnal year, especially if, as is possible, Llywelyn had

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usurped the advowson of the church. 44 However, other authentic charters of Llywelyn's containing a year-date, none of which is in favour of the Hospitallers, are dated by the year of grace or the incarnation alone (and never by the prince's regnal year). 45 The next dated document of Llywelyn's bearing the new title is a letter patent of 1 May 1230 in favour of his leading official, Ednyfed Fychan, and the title occurs in all the prince's subsequent acts. Although the royal chancery continued to refer to Llywelyn by his previous title in August 1230, it had accepted the new title by May 1231 and this was used in royal documents thereafter. 4 6 A time lag of a year or so between the adoption of the title and its acceptance by the royal chancery is perhaps more credible than one of over five years. Unfortunately there are no other acts of Llywelyn's dated, or definitely datable to, the period from November 1225 to May 1230, although it should be noted that the pope continued to refer to him as 'prince of North Wales' in response to petitions from Joan and from the bishops of St David's, Bangor and St Asaph in April 1226.47 While the charter for Dolgynwal may be authentic as it stands, its dating clause is sufficiently problematic to cast doubts on its reliability as evidence for the adoption of a new style by November 1225. If so, the balance of probability is that the style 'Llywelyn, prince of Aberffraw and lord of Snowdon' was a recent innovation in May 1230. If the precise dating of this innovation is elusive, its significance is not. As others have pointed out, Llywelyn drew on Welsh political mythology, promoted by lawyers in Gwynedd, in which the court of Aberffraw on Anglesey - the principal seat of the rulers of Gwynedd according to Gerald of Wales - represented overlordship over the other Welsh rulers. 48 This is especially clear in two Latin texts of Welsh law, Redactions Band C, compiled in Gwynedd quite possibly in the second quarter of the thirteenth century and thus contemporary with Llywelyn. According to these, only the king of Aberffraw pays gold to the king of London, whereas the other kings of Wales pay gold to Aberffraw. 4 9 In other words, by declaring himself to be prince of Aberffraw Llywelyn was, in effect, saying that he was prince of Wales, thereby implicitly challenging a cardinal principle he had accepted at Worcester in 1218, namely the king's right to receive the homages of all the Welsh lords. At the same time, the prince emphasized the link with his patrimonial territory of Gwynedd in the title 'lord of Snowdon' .5° Thus the new style drew a new distinction between, on the one hand, Llywelyn's aspirations to Wales-wide authority as prince of Aberffraw and, on the other, his position as territorial lord of Gwynedd or Snowdon.51 That Llywelyn was, in effect, claiming supremacy over native Wales is further suggested by the apparently unprecedented title used by Joan, recognized by the English crown by November 1235 at the latest, namely, 'lady of Wales' .52 When this title was first adopted, and what was its precise significance, are uncertain, though it is further proof that the affair with William de Braose had caused no lasting damage to Joan's standing at Llywelyn's court. The only surviving act issued by Joan, in which she uses the title, is not datable with any precision.53 It is, however, notable that the English chancery referred to her as ' lady of North Wales' (my emphasis) on several occasions between March 1227 and April 1230,54 and earlier records refer to her simply as the king's sister and/or the wife of Llywelyn.55 If 'lady of North Wales' was regarded as the proper title for the wife of the 'prince

20

England and Europe in the Reign of Henry Ill

of North Wales', perhaps the title 'lady of Wales' was adopted from 1230 to assert an elevation in status commensurate with that proclaimed by Llywelyn in his new title of 'prince of Aberffraw and lord of Snowdon'. If so, this would reinforce the likelihood that Llywelyn was effectively proclaiming himself prince of Wales. Of course, the title may also have reflected the special status enjoyed by Joan, as the daughter and sister of kings of England; it is worth noting that Emma of Anjou, wife of Llywelyn's uncle, Dafydd ab Owain, had used the title domina. 56 Yet the combination of this title with 'Wales', which brings to mind the title of Matilda as 'lady of England' or 'the English' about a century earlier, was something new.57 Admittedly, in Joan's case the title did not necessarily carry any constitutional significance, and may have been seen essentially as honorific, and hence acceptable, by her brother, Henry. None the less, the title provides a further illustration of the complex texture of Anglo-Welsh relations in this period: perhaps it was precisely because she was an outsider related to the king of England that Llywelyn's Plantagenet wife was able to represent the most explicit articulation of her husband's aspirations to Wales-wide authority. Yet why did Llywelyn beat about the bush and not simply call himself 'prince of Wales'? There was, after all, a precedent for this, in the final years of his grandfather, Owain Gwynedd (d. 1170); while Llywelyn ap Gruffudd made no attempt to conceal his ambition when he adapted Llywelyn ap Iorwerth's style from 1262 onwards, calling himself 'prince of Wales and lord of Snowdon' and settling simply for 'prince of Wales' in the Treaty of Montgomery in 1267.58 Perhaps, as has previously been assumed, Llywelyn ap Iorwerth feared that such an unambiguous parading of his ambitions would be too provocative, not only to the English crown, but also, more importantly, within Wales. His recourse to an archaic-sounding style may point to an attempt to justify a wider territorial hegemony by appealing to an invented tradition of Welsh rulers' dependence on the ruler of Aberffraw, and of his dependence on the 'crown of London', that stood a greater chance of acceptance within Welsh political culture than the title 'prince of Wales' .59 Nevertheless, while Llywelyn's new style was recognized by the English crown from 1231, the prince failed to secure the crown's recognition of the paramount status to which he aspired. Instead, a series of truces was agreed from the autumn of 1231, following Henry's withdrawal from Painscastle, that dealt essentially with security matters rather than great constitutional issues.6D Occasionally, in 1232 and again in 1237, we hear of talks designed to achieve a permanent peace, but these came to nothing. 61 Moreover, the crown was watchful. As Gwyn A. Williams emphasized, when Llywelyn summoned the Welsh lords to do homage and fealty at the Cistercian monastery of Strata Florida to his designated heir, Dafydd, in the early spring of 1238, letters were swiftly despatched from the English chancery forbidding them to do homage. The gathering went ahead later in the year, on 19 October, but the lords swore fealty only.6 2 The episode affords, of course, further evidence of Llywelyn's ultimate political goal; but equally it illustrates the limitations of his power. The royal chancery might tolerate a grandiloquent new style, but the crown stuck fast to the central principle, to which Llywelyn himself had assented at Worcester in 1218, that the homages of Welsh lords belonged to the king, not the ruler of Gwynedd. The events of 1238 were designed by Llywelyn further to cement the position of Dafydd as his successor, in preference to Dafydd's elder but illegitimate half-

Negotiating Anglo-Welsh Relations

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brother, Gruffudd. The great efforts made to secure Dafydd's status as Llywelyn's heir provide a further illustration of how Llywelyn sought to capitalise on his marital ties with the Plantagenets in order to strengthen his position in Wales. Let us now consider some of the consequences of the marriage to Joan. The ties of kinship established by this marriage are reflected in the wording of Llywelyn's letters to the king, which are usually addressed to Henry as Llywelyn's lord and 'dearest brother' .63 (The royal chancery, by contrast, rarely addressed Llywelyn as Henry's brother.64) Such expressions of fraternal regard probably amounted to little more than conventional diplomatic courtesies, and usually Llywelyn made little of them, though in one letter he took pains to stress that his complaint was about the king's council, not the king himself, 'because we are certain that you bear fraternal affection towards us' .65 More tangible results of the marriage to Joan were the English lands granted to Llywelyn in free marriage by King John: EJiesmere, as we have seen, but also Suckley in Worcestershire and Bidford in Warwickshire; the latter two manors in turn formed part of the marriage portion of Llywelyn's daughter Helen on her marriage to John of Scotland, heir of the earl of Chester, in 1222.66 Joan herself received the manors of Rothley in Leicestershire and Condover in Shropshire from Henry in 1225 and 1226 respectively.67 Such landholding, though as nothing compared with the English estates held by members of the Scottish royal family, created ongoing relations with the crown. Thus in late 1221 or early 1222, Llywelyn turned to the king both to seek protection for his tenants at Suckley and to argue that, since the manor had been given in free marriage, it should be exempt from the royal council's decision to resume all manors held by King John, for the prince had 'no advocate or patron ... in England' except Henry.68 (The manors were in fact seized for a time, but restored to Llywelyn in February 1222.69) But the most important consequence of Llywelyn's marriage to Joan was the birth of their son, Dafydd. When this occurred is unknown, though it clearly postdated the prince's charter of submission to John on 12 August 1211, one of whose terms was that ail Llywelyn's lands would escheat to the king should Llywelyn die without having had an heir by Joan.?O The earliest reference to Dafydd occurs in a royal mandate to Hywel ap Gruffudd of 5 May 1220, following a meeting at Shrewsbury between Llywelyn and the young king together with Archbishop Stephen Langton, the papal legate Pandulf and Hubert de Burgh, stating that the king had taken Dafydd under his protection and ordering that, as Llywelyn's heir, he and his lands should be protected.7 1 Probably at the same time Llywelyn issued a statutum declaring that he had abolished the custom whereby illegitimate sons should inherit as if they were legitimate and ordaining that Dafydd should succeed him in all his possessions, an ordinance subsequently confirmed by Pope Honorius III on 26 May 1222. 72 By May 1220, then, Llywelyn sought to ensure that his son by Joan would succeed him, thereby excluding his elder son, Gruffudd, whose mother, Tangwystl, was described in the early fourteenth-century Survey of the Honour of Denbigh as Llywelyn's girlfriend (amica).73 Yet though Tangwystl had not been Llywelyn's wife, the choice of a well-established dynastic name for their son suggests that originally Llywelyn had considered Gruffudd to be a potential successor. His subsequent marriage to Joan had changed all that. Dafydd (or David) was only the second member of the Gwynedd dynasty to have been thus named; the first was

22

England and Europe in the Reign of Henry Ill

Llywelyn's uncle, Dafydd ab Owain, and the choice of name possibly signalled Llywelyn's commitment to the Plantagenet alliance pioneered by his uncle, who had sought Henry II's support against his rivals for the principality of Gwynedd and obtained the hand of Henry's half-sister, Emma, in 1174.74 Furthermore, this originally biblical name possessed the advantage of being familiar both to Llywelyn 's Plantagenet in-laws and to the Welsh: the divergent renderings of the name by modern historians, some of whom have favoured 'David', others 'Dafydd', alerts us to the possibility that both forms may have been used in the thirteenth century, the former in English and Plantagenet circles, the latter among the Welsh of Gwynedd. 75 Be that as it may, Llywelyn went to great lengths to promote Dafydd as his heir, no doubt mindful of the damaging consequences of the thirty years' struggle among his grandfather's sons and grandsons for mastery of Gwynedd that had ended only with his own rise to power by 1200. In April 1226, in order to eliminate any doubt about Dafydd's legitimacy, Joan obtained papal legitimization for herself; at the same time, the pope, in response to a request from Welsh bishops who had informed him that the magnates of Wales had sworn fealty to Dafydd, declared that he had taken Dafydd under his protection as one who had been given to him by his parents as if he were !!is ward or foster-son (alumpnus).1 6 Then, on 3 October 1229, Henry received Dafydd's homage at Westminster, granting him £40 a year and promising him a further forty librates of land. Most important, the king took Dafydd's homage for 'all the rights and liberties which will fall to him' after Llywelyn's death, thereby guaranteeing his status as the prince's lawful successor, while remaining studiously vague as to what those rights and liberties should be. 77 The marriage alliance with the Braose family furnishes further evidence of Llywelyn 's determination to strengthen Dafydd's position, for the agreement included the transfer of the Marcher lordship of Builth as Isabella de Braose's marriage portion. Finally, as we have seen, Llywelyn - no doubt in a bid to strengthen his chosen successor's hand against the rival claims of his elder half-brother, Gruffudd- ensured that the lords of Wales renewed their fealty to Dafydd at Strata Florida in 1238. Llywelyn died on 11 April 1240 at the Cistercian abbey of Aberconwy, where he had taken the monastic habit. 78 The events which followed his death are testimony both to the personal authority he achieved in his lifetime and to the fragility of his political achievement. Dafydd succeeded as his father had intended. According to the Annals of Tewkesbury, he went in May to a royal council at Gloucester, where Henry knighted him and granted him 'all the lands which his father held by right' (meaning Gwynedd), and wore there the coronet known as the garlonde, the insignia of the principality of Gwynedd, 'subjecting himself in all things, however, to the king of England'.79 The other Welsh lords also did homage to the king. Yet if the crown was ready to see Dafydd succeed to Gwynedd, it seized on the opportunity to squash the wider hegemonic ambitions of his father.so In his earliest acts as prince, Dafydd reverted to his father's first title: 'prince of North Wales' .s1 Then, after military intervention by Henry, Dafydd submitted on 29 August 1241 at Gwerneigron, about two miles south of Rhuddlan on the river Elwy, where he surrendered the cantref of Tegeingl to the king, promised to return the lands seized by Llywelyn during John's reign to their lords and handed over his brother, Gruffudd, having agreed to accept the judgement of the king 's court regarding the 'portion' of

Negotiating Anglo-Welsh Relations

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patrimony to which Gruffudd was entitled. The scale of the surrender is underlined by the new title used by the prince, namely 'Dafydd, son of Llywelyn, former prince of North Wales'. 82 In the event, the threat from his half-brother vanished when Gruffudd fell to his death while trying to escape from the Tower of London on St David's Day, 1244.83 Later in that year Dafydd made an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to make Wales a papal fief, and in two acts of late 1244 or early 1245 he styled himself 'prince of Wales' (princeps Wallie).8 4 The political legacy left by his father had not been forgotten; indeed, it was developed in new ways. However, Dafydd himself died on 25 February 1246,85 providing further opportunities for royal intervention that foundered only with the ascendancy of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd. Ironically, it was this son of the illegitimate Gruffudd who eventually succeeded in gaining recognition from Henry as 'prince of Wales' in 1267. Dafydd's early death without issue thus brought Llywelyn's plans for the succession to a premature conclusion. The close links with the Plantagenet dynasty that made those plans possible stemmed from an openness on the part of Llywelyn - already demonstrated to a lesser degree by some earlier Welsh rulers, notably Rhys ap Gruffudd (the Lord Rhys) of Deheubarth in south-west Wales, who died in 1197- to aspects of English and Marcher society. 86 The marriage to Joan, and the emphasis on legitimate birth as a criterion of Dafydd's right to succeed, reflected a significant cultural as well as political shift: an acknowledgement that greater contact with the Anglo-French aristocratic world, and acceptance of some its values, could serve to strengthen the dynasty of Gwynedd. Yet such a strategy also had its dangers. For one thing, it created new ties of dependence with the English crown, formalised in written agreements.87 True, Llywelyn's dominant position in Wales allowed him to take a relaxed view of his obligations under these; but the price of his failure to secure an unambiguous recognition of his hegemony beyond Gwynedd became all too apparent after his death. At the same time, this process of acculturation met with resistance from traditionalist elements in Welsh society. 88 Lawyers in Llywelyn's Gwynedd, though willing to acknowledge the special status of the prince's Plantagenet wife, nevertheless wished to curb her public role; they also implied that Gruffudd's exclusion from the succession on the grounds of illegitimacy was unjust.89 Nor were such sentiments confined to the pages of legal texts. The considerable efforts made to establish Dafydd as Llywelyn's successor are ample testimony to the extensive support enjoyed by Gruffudd, support that probably explains why his half-brother was so quick to submit to, and thus gain recognition from, Henry III in 1240.90 What seems clear, though, is that Llywelyn thought these risks worth taking in the pursuit of his political ambitions. If at times he confronted his brotherin-law as an enemy, he also appreciated the advantages of securing the support of the king of England in his efforts to construct a principality of Wales.9 1 Notes BT, Pen20Tr, 101-2; BT, RBH, 228-9; RL, i. 366-7, 368-9 (CAC, 37, 51; H, nos. 34950). For a valuable recent discussion of these events, see J.J. Crump, 'Repercussions of

24

2

3 4 5 6 7

8 9 10 11

12 13

14 15 16 17 18 19

England and Europe in the Reign of Henry Ill

the execution of William de Braose: a letter from Llywelyn ab Iorwerth to Stephen de Segrave', Historical Research 73 (2000), 197-212. J.E. Lloyd, A History of Wales from the Earliest Times to the Edwardian Conquest (3rd edn, 2 vols, London, 1939), ii. 671-2; F.M. Powicke, King Henry Ill and the Lord Edward: The Community of the Realm in the Thirteenth Century (2 vols, Oxford, 1947), i. 181; R.F. Walker, 'Hubert de Burgh and Wales, 1218-1232', EHR 87 (1972), 483-4. CR 1227-31,368. RL, i. 367 (CAC, 37). RL, i. 368-9 (CAC. 51; H, nos. 349-50). Crump, 'Repercussions', 200-3 argues that Llywelyn was reluctantly forced into accepting his magnates' judgement against William de Braose. D. Jenkins, 'Prolegomena to the laws of court', in The Welsh King and his Court, eds T.M. Charles-Edwards, M.E. Owen and P. Russell (Cardiff, 2000), 16. A.J . Roderick, 'Marriage and politics in Wales, 1066-1282', Welsh History Review 4 ( 1968-9), 16-18; R. Frame, 'Aristocracies and the political configuration of the British Isles', in The British Isles 1100-1500: Comparisons, Contrasts and Connections, ed. R.R. Davies (Edinburgh, 1988), 148; repr. in R. Frame, Britain and Ireland 1170-1450 (London, 1998), 161. AM, iii. 117. Lloyd, History ofWales, ii. 671, 705, n. 69; Foedera, I. i. 208 (CPR 1232-47, 3-4; H, no. 353); CR 1237-42, 350. For Braose anger, see Crump, 'Repercussions', 201, 212. Lloyd, History of Wales, ii. 685-6. See in general R.R. Davies, Domination and Conquest: The Experience of Ireland, Scotland and Wales (Cambridge, 1990), 16-20, 47-65; H. Pryce, 'A cross-border career: Giraldus Cambrensis between Wales and England', in Grenzgiinger, ed. R. Schneider (VerOffentlichungen der Kommission fi.ir Saarllindische Landesgeschichte und Volksforschung 33, Saarbri.icken, 1998), 45-60, esp. 45-50. Descriptio Kambriae, ii. 8, in Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, eds J.S. Brewer, J.F. Dimock and G.F. Warner (8 vols, Rolls Series, London, 1861-91), vi . 218; PR 1225-32, I lOll. PR 1225-32, 457-8. For the career, including activities in England, of one of Llywelyn's prelates, Bishop Cadwgan of Bangor (1215-35/6), see J. Goering and H. Pryce, 'The De modo confitendi of Cadwgan, bishop of Bangor', Mediaeval Studies 62 (2000), 127, esp. 3-6. It has yet to be established how many Welsh clergy and monks spent their careers wholly or mainly in England in this period, such as the John who was elected abbot of Malmesbury in 1222: Rot. Claus., i. 520b. Rot. Claus., i. 51 lb. RL, i. 487-8 (CAC, 20; H, no. 340). For the clerk or clerks of Llywelyn referred to variously as Instructus, Osturcius, Ostricius and (in Welsh) Ystrwyth, see D. Stephenson, The Governance of Gwynedd (Cardiff, 1984), 30-1,224-5. Lloyd, History of Wales , ii. 693. G.A. Williams, 'The succession to Gwynedd, 1238-47' , Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies 20 (1962-4), 393-413; J.B. Smith, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, Prince of Wales (Cardiff, 1998), 19-27. See esp. Walker, 'Hubert de Burgh and Wales', 465-94; D. Carpenter, The Minority of Henry Ill (London, 1990), passim; N. Vincent, Peter des Roches: An Alien in English Politics, 1205-1238 (Cambridge, 1996), esp. Chap. 12. R.R. Davies, 'Kings, lords and liberties in the march of Wales, 1066-1272', TRHS, 5th ser., 29 (1979), 56-60; idem, Conquest, Coexistence, and Change: Wales 1063-1415 (Oxford, 1987), 300-7.

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25

20 Smith, Llywelyn. 21 The Acts of Welsh Rulers, 1120-1283, ed. H. Pryce with C. Insley (forthcoming). This project has received generous support from the Leverhulme Trust and the Arts and Humanities Research Board. Most of the documents included in the edition are listed in H. 22 H, nos. 122, 123; C. Insley, ' Fact and fiction in thirteenth-century Gwynedd: the Aberconwy charters', Studia Celtica 33 (1999), 235-50. A letter addressed to Pope Innocent III by Llywelyn and other Welsh rulers, preserved only by Gerald of Wales, is also of dubious authenticity: H, no. 331. See also the discussion of Llywelyn's charter for the Hospitallers of Dolgynwal: below, pp. 18-19. 23 Cf. C. Insley, 'From rex Wallie to princeps Wallie: charters and state formation in thirteenth-century Wales', in The Medieval State: Essays presented to James Campbell, eds J.R. Maddicott and D.M. Palliser (London and Rio Grande, OH, 2000), 179-96. 24 I.W. Rowlands, 'King John and Wales', in King John: New interpretations, ed. S.D. Church (Woodbridge, 1999), 273-87. See also Lloyd, History of Wales, ii. 612-50; Davies, Conquest, 236-43, 292-7. 25 I.W. Rowlands, 'The 1201 peace between King John and Llywelyn ap Iorwerth', Studia Celtica 34 (2000), 149-66. 26 Texts in Foedera, I. i. 150-1, and Rot. Claus., i. 378b-379a (H, nos. 335-7). It seems that the interdict imposed on Wales in November 1216 had been lifted a year later, well before the negotiatons at Worcester: Lloyd, History of Wales, ii. 658 ; The Letters and Charters of Cardinal Guala Bicchieri, Papal Legate in England, 1216-1218. ed. N. Vincent (Canterbury and York Soc. 83; Woodbridge, 1996), 91, nos. 124-5. 27 Lloyd, History of Wales, ii. 653-4; Davies, Conquest, 242-3; Carpenter, Minority of Henry ll/, 74-7. 28 Foedera, I. i. 150; Rot. Claus. , i. 354b-356a. 29 Smith, Llywelyn, 21-2. 30 J.B. Smith, 'Magna Carta and the charters of the Welsh princes' , EHR 99 (1984), 34462 (H, no. 131). 31 Foedera, I. i. 151 ; BT, Pen20Tr, 99; BT, RBH, 222-5. 32 Carpenter, Minority of Henry ll/, 76. 33 RL, i. 122-3 (CAC, 8-9; H, no. 342). The letter was written shortly after 10 May: CAC. 9. For the expression status Wallie, see Smith, Llywelyn, 292 and n. 67. 34 Foedera, I. i. 196; CPR 1225-32,269-70. 35 RL, i. 368 (CAC, 24-5; H, no. 348). 36 The Charters of the Anglo-Norman Earls of Chester c.J071-1237, ed. G. Barraclough (Record Soc. of Lancashire and Cheshire 126; 1988), no. 411 (H, no. 346); Annales Cestrienses, ed. R.C. Christie (Record Soc. of Lancashire and Cheshire 14; London, 1887), 50-3. Cf. K.J. Stringer, Earl David of Huntingdon 1152-1219 (Edinburgh, 1985), 182-3. 37 PRO, C 66/146, m. 2; this inspeximus was confirmed by Edward III on 21 October 1334: PRO, C 66/184, m. 19. The charter is partially printed in R.W. Eyton, Antiquities of Shropshire (12 vols, London 1854-60), x. 247, and calendared in CPR 1313-17, 576; CPR 1334-8, 34-5; Stephenson, Governance of Gwynedd, 202; H, no. 134. For the Hospitallers' hospice at Dolgynwal, see W. Rees, A History of the Order of StJohn of Jerusalem in Wales and on the Welsh Border (Cardiff, 1947), 63-9. There is independent evidence that the order owned Ellesmere church by 1294. The advowson was still held by the king in 1221. and may have been usurped by Llywelyn as the result of conquests in Shropshire two years later: ibid., 63 , n. *; Eyton, x. 237-8. 38 H , nos. 118, 124, 126-31, 133, 138, 140. The two spurious charters for Aberconwy are not included in this total: see n. 22 above.

26 39 40

41

42 43 44

45

46

47 48 49 50 51

England and Europe in the Reign of Henry Ill

The diplomatic of Llywelyn's charters will be considered further in Acts of Welsh Rulers. The preamble reads: 'Quod perpetua debet gaudere stabilitate et fidedignorum testimonio virorum debet confirmari et scriptis competentibus roborari'. The other examples are Llywelyn's charter for Cymer abbey in 1209 and his charter for Ynys Lannog (Priestholm) priory, Anglesey in 1221: K. Williams-Jones, 'Llywelyn's charter to Cymer abbey in 1209', Journal of the Merioneth Historical and Record Soc. 3 (1957-60), 54; CChR 1257-1300, 459 (H, nos. 130, 133). The only other preamble among the charters of twelfth- and thirteenth-century Welsh rulers occurs in a charter of Gwenwynwyn ab Owain of southern Powys for Strata Marcella abbey in 1191: The Charters of the Abbey of Ystrad Marchell, ed. G.C.G. Thomas (Aberystwyth, 1997), no. 14 (H, no. 208). I owe this last point to Nicholas Vincent. The dating clause reads: 'Datum apud Ruthin in octabis sancti Martini anno regni Henrici iunioris regis Anglie decimo'. The closest parallel among Welsh rulers' acts to the usage of iunior with respect to an English king occurs in a charter issued in favour of Goldcliff priory in 1154 x 1158 by Morgan and Iorwerth, sons of Owain, lords of Gwynllwg or Caerleon in south-east Wales, and in the late twelfth- or early thirteenth-century confirmation of it by Hywel ap Iorwerth, where Henricus iunior is used to distinguish Henry II from Henry I (Henricus senior): PRO, C 53/76, m. 10; Evreux, Archives departementales de l'Eure, H 9 (H, nos. 175, 181). Rot. Claus., i. 378-9 (H, no. 337); PR 1216-25, 411 (H, no. 347); cf. Smith, 'Magna Carta', 362 (H, no. 131). All these examples pre-date Llywelyn's assumption of the title 'prince of Aberffraw and lord of Snowdon'. Charters of Ystrad Marchell, no. 14 ('anno M° C0 xc0 , regnante rege Anglie Ricardo nomine, anno ii 0 '). Seen. 37 above. There does not seem to have been a general presumption, though, that Welsh rulers' grants of lands in England should be thus dated. For example, Llywelyn's charters granting lands in Shropshire to Haughmond abbey lack dating clauses of any kind: The Cartulary of HaughmondAbbey, ed. U. Rees (Cardiff, 1985), nos. 657, 789, 806, 1172 (H, nos. 126-8, 138). Williams-Jones, 'Llywelyn's charter', 57 (H, no. 130); CChR 1257-1300, 459 (H, no. 133); J.G. Evans, Report on Manuscripts in the Welsh Language (2 vols, Historical Manuscripts Commission, London, 1898-1910), ii. 859 (H, no. 137); W. Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, eds J. Caley, H. Ellis and B. Bandinel (6 vols in 8, London, 1817-30), iv. 582 (H, no. 140). The Aberconwy charters include the prince's regnal year in their (identical) dating clauses, but these documents are not authentic acts of Llywelyn: see n. 22 above. CR 1227-31, 368; PR 1225-32, 436. The reference to Llywelyn as 'prince of Wales' in January 1229 in CLR 1226-40, 115 (noticed in Williams, 'The succession to Gwynedd', 394, n. 1) was probably a clerical error for 'prince of North Wales'; Llywelyn was never accorded the former title in letters from the king, nor does he appear to have adopted it in his own acts. Vatican, Archivio Segreto, Reg. Vat. 13, fo. 122v, nos. 252-3 (CPL, i. 109). Lloyd, History ofWales, ii. 682; Smith, Llywelyn, 17-18, 188, 284. Gerald: 1tinerarium Kambriae, i. 10, and Descriptio Kambriae, i. 4, in Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, vi. 81, 169. The Latin Texts of the Welsh Laws, ed. H.D. Emanuel (Cardiff, 1967), 207, 277. I follow established usage here, though the title is probably more accurately translated 'lord of Snowdonia': Smith, Llywelyn, 188, n. 4. The notions that Aberffraw represented supremacy over Wales and Snowdonia

Negotiating Anglo- Welsh Relations

27

represented the prince's dynastic roots are arguably implicit in the praise poem composed by the court poet Llywarch ap Llywelyn to celebrate Llywelyn's victories in the March and Deheubarth in 1217, in which Aberffraw is named first in a list of eighteen courts or castles held by the prince and Llywelyn's ancestry is explicitly linked with Snowdonia: Gwaith Llywarch ap Llywelyn 'Prydydd y Mach', ed. E.M. Jones assisted by N.A. . Jones (Cardiff, 1991), no. 25, esp. lines 13-28, 43-9. 52 CPR 1232-47, 130. The obituary notices of Joan in the Annals of Tewkesbury and Annals of Chester likewise refers to her as domina Walliae, as do Welsh sources composed after her death in 1237: AM, i. 101; Annales Cestrienses, 61; O.E. Jones, 'Llyfr Coch Asaph: A Textual and Historical Study' (2 vols, University of Wales MA thesis, Aberystwyth, 1968), i. 73; BT, Pen20Tr, 104. 53 RL, i. 487-8 ( CAC, 20; H no. 340). 54 PR 1225-32, 112; CR 1227-31, 68-9, 123, 322. 55 See e. g. Foedera, I. i. 152, 159. 56 'Domina Emma soror Henrici regis uxor David filii Owini principis Norwallie': Shrewsbury, Shropshire Records and Research Centre MS 600116869 (Haughmond Cartulary), fo. 209v (calendared in Cartulary of Haughmond, no. 1170; H, no. 117). Cf. BT, RBH, 164-5. 57 Cf. M. Chibnall, The Empress Matilda: Queen Consort, Queen Mother and Lady of the English (Oxford, 1991), 102. 58 H. Pryce, 'Owain Gwynedd and Louis VII: the Franco-Welsh diplomacy of the first prince of Wales', Welsh History Review 19 (1998-9), 1-28; Smith, Llywelyn, 109-10, 145, 188-9, 284-5. Llywelyn was given the title princeps Wallie in an agreement with Walter Comyn and other Scottish lords on 18 March 1258, but then appears to have avoided using any title until the adoption of 'prince of Wales and lord of Snowdon', first attested in September 1262: Littere Wallie, ed. J.G. Edwards (Cardiff, 1940), 1846; RL, ii. 218-19 (H, nos. 380, 391). 59 Cf. Lloyd, History ofWales, ii. 682; Davies, Conquest, 246-7; Smith, Llywelyn, 284. 60 Texts of these truces in PR 1225-32, 453 (30 Nov. 1231); Foedera, I. i. 208 (7 Dec. 1232); RL, i. 433-5 (9 Apr. 1234); PRO, C 66/44, m. 9 (7 July 1234); Foedera, I. i. 229-30 (11 July 1236); ibid., 236 (c. 8 July 1238); calendared in CPR 1232-47, 3-4, 43, 59, 153, 237; H, nos. 351, 353, 355, 356, 357. The truce was almost certainly renewed again for another year in July 1239, and recorded on the lost patent roll for 23 Henry III: cf. Williams, 402 and n. 1. 61 There seem to have been hopes of turning the November 1231 truce into a peace, as a safe-conduct was issued in late January 1232 to two envoys of Llywelyn to negotiate a truce or peace between the king and the prince: PR 1225-32, 460. For the situation in 1237, see Williams, 'The succession to Gwynedd', 402. 62 Ibid., 395-6; BT, Pen20Tr, 104; BT, RBH, 234-5. 63 See e. g. RL, i. 59-60, 113-14, 368 (H, nos. 338, 343, 348). 64 For one exception from July 1236, addressed 'dilecto fratri et fideli suo L. principi de Abberfrau, domino de Snaudon", see CR 1234-7, 369. Cf. the safe-conduct issued in July 1226 for 'nostrum fidelem et dilectum fratrem L. principem Norwalliae', together with his wife and son (i.e. the king's sister, Joan, and nephew, Dafydd): PR 1225-32, 56. 65 RL, i. 59 (CAC, 23; H, no. 338). The letter is datable to 1218 x 1227. 66 Lloyd, History of Wales, ii. 647; Charters of the Anglo-Norman Earls of Chester, no. 411. 67 Lloyd, ibid., ii. 665. 68 PRO, SC 114, no. 20 (CAC, 25; H, no. 345). 69 Rot. Claus., i. 487. For the resumption of royal manors ordered on 30 September 1221,

28

70

71 72

73 74 75

76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85

England and Europe in the Reign of Henry /II

see The Great Roll of the Pipe for the Fifth Year of King Henry lll Michaelmas 1221, ed. D. Crook (Pipe Roll Soc., new ser. 48, 1990 for 1984-6), xxxiv-xxxvi; Carpenter, Minority of Henry /II, 269-70. Smith, 'Magna Carta', 362: 'et liberabo ei filium meum Griffinum tenendum semper et ad faciendum inde vo1untatem suam, ita quod si de filia domini regis uxore mea heredem non habuero concedo ipsi domino meo regi tanquam heredi meo omnes terras meas ... '. The use of the future perfect habuero makes it clear that Joan had not yet borne Llywelyn a son, and that the clause was not simply covering the possibility that the prince might be pre-deceased by a legitimate son who was alive in 1211. Foedera, I. i. 159. Vatican, Archivio Segreto, Reg. Vat. 11, fo. 244r-v, no. 407 (CPL, i. 87; H, no. 87). See further Powicke, King Henry Ill, ii. 630 and n. 1; Stephenson, Governance of Gwynedd, 153-4; J. B. Smith, 'Dynastic succession in medieval Wales', Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies 33 (1986), 218-19; Smith, Llywelyn, 12-14. Survey of the Honour of Denbigh 1334, eds P. Vinogradoff and F. Morgan (London, 1914), 128. Lloyd, History ofWales, ii. 551. In the case of Dafydd ab Owain the choice of name may have been influenced wholly or mainly by the Old Testament account in the Book of Samuel, where the prophet anoints David, the youngest son of Jesse, instead of Saul, declared deposed by God, although the parallel was arguably even more relevant to the position of Dafydd ap Llywelyn: I Samuel 15-16; cf. D.B. Walters, 'Comparative aspects of the tractates on the laws of court', in Welsh King and his Court, eds Charles-Edwards et al., 387. The biography ofDafydd ab Owain's grandfather, Gruffudd ap Cynan (d. 1137), extant in a Welsh text written during the reign of Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, includes several comparisons between Gruffudd and the biblical David: Historia Gruffud vab Kenan, ed. D.S. Evans (Cardiff, 1977), 19, 20, 23. Another possible influence, however, was David I of Scotland (1124-53): as Dafydd ab Owain (d. 1203) is first mentioned in the chronicles in 1157 (BT, Pen20Tr, 59), he was presumably born during David I's reign. (David I may in tum have been named in honour of David, brother of King Salomon of Hungary, who could have been a sponsor to Margaret of Scotland at her baptism: G.W.S. Barrow, Scotland and its Neighbours in the Middle Ages (London, 1992), 39, n. 78.) The influence of St David is unlikely, as the Welsh form of the saint's name was Dewi. Seen. 47 above, and also Crump, 'Repercussions', 204 and n. 29. PR 1225-32,269-70. BT, Pen20Tr, 105; BT, RBH, 236-7. AM, i. 115. For the agreement whereby Dafydd submitted to Henry at Gloucester on 15 May, see CR 1237-42, 240-1; Littere Wallie, 5-6. Cf. Smith, 'Dynastic succession', 220. Dugdale, Monasticon, v. 263; Littere Wallie, 18-19, 20-1, 153-4 (H, nos. 143, 359-61, 363). However, in his agreement with Henry III in May 1240, Dafydd was styled 'son of Llywelyn, former prince of North Wales and lord of Aberffraw': n. 79 above. For texts of the treaty, see e. g. Paris, Chron. Majora, iv. 321-3; Foedera, I. i. 242; Littere Wallie, 9-10 (H, no. 364). The new style also occurs in acts issued by Dafydd on 31 August and 24 October 1241: Littere Wallie, 10-13, 22-3 (H, nos. 365-8). Lloyd, History ofWales, ii. 700-1. M. Richter, 'David ap Llywelyn, the first prince of Wales', Welsh History Review 5 (1970-1), 205-19; British Library, Additional MS 4558, fo. 256r (H, no. 371); PRO, SC 1111, no. 54 (CAC, 49-50; H, no. 372). Lloyd, History of Wales, ii. 705.

Negotiating Anglo-Welsh Relations

29

86 For Rhys, see Davies, Conquest, 52-4, 219-24; R. Turvey, The Lord Rhys, Prince of Deheubarth (Llandysul, 1997); Yr Arglwydd Rhys, eds N.A. Jones and H. Pryce (Cardiff, 1996). 87 Cf. Davies, Domination, 94-6. 88 For recent discussions, with reference to other studies, of the tensions between the demands of modernising rulers such as Llywelyn and their subjects, see H. Pryce, 'The context and purpose of the earliest Welsh lawbooks', Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies, 39 (Summer 2000), 53-63, and D. Stephenson, 'The laws of court: past reality or present ideal?', in Welsh King and his Court, ed. Charles-Edwards et al., 403-6. 89 R.C. Stacey, 'King, queen and edling in the laws of court', in ibid., 53-62; H. Pryce, Native Law and the Church in Medieval Wales (Oxford, 1993), 98-100. Cf. A.D. Carr, 'Prydydd y Moch: ymateb hanesydd', Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1989, 173-4, which observes that the poet Llywarch ap Llywelyn, while sympathetic to Tangwystl, never mentions Joan. 90 Welsh sympathy for Gruffudd is highlighted in Williams, 'The succession to Gwynedd', 401-8; Smith, Llywelyn, 31-2. 91 I am grateful to all those who offered comments and asked questions after the first airing of this paper at the conference in Swansea, especially Paul Brand, David Carpenter and Nicholas Vincent; the errors and oversimplifications that remain are mine alone.

Chapter 2

Reconfiguring the Angevin Empire, 1224-1259 Robin Studd

In his recent splendidly readable biography of Philip Augustus, Jim Bradbury refers to the efforts of Jean Dunbabin and John Gillingham to uncover 'attempts to bring unity to the Angevin Empire' but, he concludes, 'in all honesty little was achieved in this direction beyond a beginning which was never fulfilled' .I He is but the latest exponent of a traditional view of the Angevin Empire. Like Humpty Dumpty, its fall was great and, as a consequence, neither all the king's horses nor all the king's men could put the broken egg back together again. It is a view of the Angevin Empire favoured by Jim Holt2 which has, in turn, been excoriated by Jean Dunbabin.3 However, it is a view which raises a number of questions at the outset of this paper. To what extent was there any sense of 'unity' left to the Angevin dominions after the French king's victories in Normandy in 1203, at Bouvines in 1214 and in Poitou ten years later? What kind of imperium, if any, did Henry III preside over in the period before the Treaty of Paris of 1259? Why were the king's dominions on the continent so much better organised, and with so much more potential in 1259, than they had been half a century earlier? Accepting, therefore, that the king's horses may have had little to offer, it is the contention here that many of the king's men strove manfully to put the metaphorical egg back together, and that the king himself had a greater measure of success in doing so than he has usually been given credit for. That is the theme of this chapter, although I readily concede that much remains to be worked out in detail and that what I am presenting, tentatively, are the main lines of an argument I shall seek to develop elsewhere. I also acknowledge readily a debt to the unpublished work of my sometime supervisor, and I trust, mentor, John Le Patourel, who began research in this area with the intention of producing a sequel to The Norman Empire (though, technically, much of his research was done before he wrote on Normandy and England and was put on ice when Trabut-Cussac finally produced his these). 4 The Angevin dominions in France were all but lost completely by 1205. By then only the two towns, La Rochelle and Bordeaux, and their hinterlands remained of all that had once comprised Henry II's 'empire'. The loss of La Rochelle to Louis VIII in August 1224 merely aggravated an already grave position, but also threw into relief the position of Gascony which now found itself no longer on the fringe but at the centre of the Angevin lands in France.5 The particular problem for Henry III and his advisers was how, in such overwhelmingly hostile circumstances, the Angevins could hope to retain any of the king's severely truncated dominions in

32

England and Europe in the Reign of Henry Ill

France, let alone to make his rule over them effective now that the king himself was likely to be much more permanently resident in England rather than on his French lands and, especially at a time when, in John Gillingham's memorable phrase, 'To challenge the crown of France was to run the risk of losing Gascony as well' .6 For the Angevins, after 1224, this was entirely new ground. There was no thought that the king's patrimony should be abandoned. But equally, there were no precedents and there was no constitutional arrangement to fall back upon, nothing to guide the king-duke in such circumstances. The Angevin Empire had after all never been more than an assemblage of the lands of Henry II, personal possessions of an itinerant monarch, largely devoid of institutional unity beyond the central role of the king. Like other fiefs in France in the twelfth century, it was subject to the same limitations of feudal custom and practised partible inheritance. In 1200, the Treaty of Le Goulet had further complicated the position by requiring liege homage from King John as a condition of Philip II's recognition of the Angevin family settlement of 1199. But after the confiscation of his estates John's position was uncertain as well as insecure and his retention of Aquitaine was possible only because it had not technically been inherited from his mother, Eleanor, until her death in 1204. Indeed, as Professor Le Patourel pointed out, it was not until the 1240s that a credible legal framework for the remaining Angevin dominions had evolved and only in 1254 that a constitutional link, centred on the concept of the inalienability of the crown's lands, between King Henry's English and continental inheritance was put in place.? Henry's strongest claim to govern a political union on the continent was provided by the title he inherited from his father: Dei gracia rex Anglie, dominus Hibernie, dux Normannie et Aquitannie, comes Andegavie. The claims to govern Normandy and Anjou were, however, a fiction from the outset of the reign and the title to Aquitaine clearly overstated the reality of his position after 1224. None was nevertheless, abandoned; they were King Henry's patrimonial inheritance, which certainly explains the tenacity with which Henry not only clung to his continental territories but sought, when the opportunity arose, to strengthen their government there. Aquitaine, which gave Henry his remaining substantive title south of the Channel, comprised the three counties of Poitou, Saintonge and Limoges with claims to overlordship of three more, LaMarche, Angouleme and Perigord. But, after 1224, only Gascony, which Richard of Cornwall's campaign in 1225-1227 rescued for the Angevin cause, and parts of Saintonge, remained entirely in Henry 's hands.s Poitou, north of the Charente river, and the allegiances of the most substantial lords of the region were lost. The duchy of Gascony, however, had been annexed by the Aquitanians in 1059 and although substantial parts of it had either been alienated, as, for instance the diocese of Agen (Agenais), which was granted away in 1196 as dower on the marriage of Raymond VI of Toulouse with Richard I's sister, or otherwise had seceded, as, after 1059, the Pyreneean lordships of Beam, Comminges, Bigorre and Armagnac did by electing for the allegiance of the kings of Aragon, there still remained the south-western pays of Labourd, Chalosse and the Landes as well as Entre-deux-Mers, the Bazadais and Bordelais. This was an area of political opportunity as well as of economic potential soon to be realised. But it hardly figured in the itineraries of the twelfth century dukes and was something of an

Reconfiguring the Angevin Empire

33

unknown entity to the Angevin king-dukes and their advisers in the first decades of the thirteenth century.9 Gascony's status, also, remained rather ambiguous after 1224 for, while Henry's title was to the duchy of Aquitaine, what he actually held was Gascony, although there was a strong, but quite erroneous, inclination to treat the two as synonymous. The failure to distinguish between Aquitania and Vasconia was one of the persistent shortcomings of the Angevins in the thirteenth century and was clearly demonstrated by that clause of the Treaty of Paris of 1259 which extended the obligation to render liege homage from Aquitaine to Gascony too. 10 For their own reasons, therefore, after 1224, the Angevins had to become involved in the affairs of the far south-west. Consequently, their chief concerns, beyond hanging on to what was left of the patrimonial lands, in the period between the loss of Poitou and the ratification of the Treaty of Paris in 1259, were, first, the military defence of their dominions, and, second, keeping the Capetians at political arms' length by resisting the persistent encroachment of the French king's courts and officials upon the government and administration of Gascony. 11 It was the Angevins' successes in these respects which resulted in the significant institutional developments which took place in the duchy. Beginning during Richard of Cornwall's expedition, progress was slow initially but considerably speeded up after the king's visit of 1242-1243 and propelled forward at an even faster rate as a result of his return to Gascony in 1253-1254. The focus of change was on the seneschal's office; its evolution in turn pushed forward other institutional change and, ultimately, produced the significant constitutional developments in the duchy which John Le Patourel outlined more than three decades ago. Until the departure of Richard of Cornwall from Gascony in 1227, separate seneschals existed for Gascony and Poitou, although the two positions were quite often linked.'2 At other times independent seneschals, for instance, for the Perigord, the Angoumois and the Limousin appear in the record.l3 But after the fall ofPoitou to Louis VIII, Gascony became a single seneschaussee and so remained until, as a consequence of the terms of the Treaty of Paris (1259), it seemed necessary to Henry III to return to earlier practice by trying to appoint separate seneschals for the Three Dioceses and for Bigorre. From the reign of John onwards, the principal role of the seneschal was to act in the absence of the king-duke. This implied, in the first instance, that he had a primary responsibility for guarding the king's lands in person and was therefore charged with the authority over his castles and the raising of military service within his seneschausee. Second, it implied that the seneschal had the duty to act in the king's absence in the administration of his estates as if the king himself was present in the duchy, that is, in the organisation and administration of the king-duke's government, the running of his courts and the raising of a revenue in order to bear the costs of the administration. As the king's specially commissioned representative in the duchy, the seneschal ceased to be merely an officer of the ducal household as he had been earlier. Because the king was now more permanently resident north of the Channel, and it was no longer possible to assume that his visits to the duchy would be as frequent as before, 14 the seneschal began to acquire vice-regal powers with the trappings that went with those powers, as the chief official within the administration of the duchy itself.

34

England and Europe in the Reign of Henry III

Not surprisingly the king began to demand assurances of his seneschal's trustworthiness, necessary after the experiences of Henry de Troubleville's tenure of the position between 1227 and 1232. 15 For instance, from 1229, but possibly from an earlier date, the seneschal was required to render account of his period of office. 16 In that year, Troubleville was specifically absolved from the duty of rendering account for monies received before Easter. His successor Hubert Ruse (1237-1241), was similarly released from rendering account in 1242,17 while Nicholas de Meulles (1243-1245) was ordered to account in full for his period and also became the first known seneschal to be paid a wage for his troubles, 1000 marks a year, and was given an additional lump sum of 500 marks to maintain him in royal service. IS The principle of a wage was not yet established, however, for his immediate successor, Guillaume de Bueil. (1245-1247), received neither fee nor salary, but was nevertheless ordered to render an account.I9 It was only after Simon de Montfort's tenure of office in the duchy that this became a regular payment for a job done, probably because de Montfort negotiated his own favourable terms for taking on the fixed-term (sevenyear) appointment.20 As the seneschal's office evolved, and by the 1270s, the seneschal regularly received 2000 livres tournois a year and reasonable expenses. 2I In the same vein, Hugh de Vivonne, seneschal, 1232-1234, was required to swear an oath to defend the king's interests throughout Poitou, Aquitaine and Gascony, to guard the king's rights and to seek to recover those which had been lost, and to use the revenues generated from those lands to the best advantage of the king. This is the earliest known occasion on which an oath of office was required of the seneschal, but it became the norm thereafter.22 The emphasis on the duty to guard the king's rights is significant. Savaric de Mauleon, for instance, seneschal between 1221 and 1224, was instructed to enquire into alienated royal rights, revenues and lands which had been granted away by Henry III's predecessors and by earlier seneschals without warrant, indicating the idea that there was already in existence the concept of a corpus of royal possessions recoverable at some distance in time if they had been lost to the king without proper authority. Considerable vigilance was already required of the seneschal to safeguard royal rights which needed to be exercised regularly or be lost.23 This might entail the summoning of military service, especially when the king himself proposed to go to the duchy, with the result that, for instance, in the campaign through Saintonge in 1242, Gascon and English lords participated alongside each other; no distinction was made between them, and both groups were similarly summoned to appear in November 1242, in February and August 1243,24 while William Longespee, the claimant to the earldom of Salisbury, was put in command of the royal forces.25 In the king's absence however, from 1224 onwards, responsibility for the defence of the duchy fell squarely on the shoulders of the seneschal. In 1224, the Capetians clearly shocked a complacent Angevin administration by overrunning and occupying many of the strategic fortresses in the duchy, including St Emilion, Rauzan, La Reole, Bazas and Langon.26 Although Richard of Cornwall's expeditionary force was subsequently able to throw them back beyond the Charente, a potentially fatal flaw in the Angevin tenure of the duchy was exposed. The reaction of the English administration was predictable. The seneschal set in train a series of measures designed to strengthen the ducal defences. Henry de

Reconjiguring the Angevin Empire

35

Troubleville, in particular, set about recovering castles which had been alienated, such as Uza,27 given by King John to the vicomte of Tartas, or Belin, in the hands of the del Soler family.28 Between 1237 and 1241, some significant castle-building operations were undertaken by the seneschal in order to prevent a recurrence of the disaster of 1224 so that, for example, the castle at La Reole was strengthened by building operations in 1228 and 1238, 29 and the donjon of St Emilion was built in 1237.30 The inference is clear; the blame for 1224 was seen to lie with the poor military preparedness of the local Gascon lords and the lack of central authority on the part of the ducal administration, so that a much more strenuous attitude was adopted towards the king-duke's vassals by the ducal administration. Those who had removed military equipment or allowed it to become obsolete were ordered to restore their .fortresses to a state of readiness.3 1 Garrisons were installed in some castles, as for instance, in 1230 in Castillon-sur-Dordogne and Couthures-sur-Garonne, belonging to the archbishop ofBordeaux.32 Castles held by those who sided with the Capetians or whose loyalty was otherwise suspect, were confiscated. Blaye was seized from its lord, Geoffroi Rudel;33 Bouglon was taken from Guillaume-Raimond du Pins, lord of Caumont, who had sworn fealty to Louis VIII in 1226.34 Other castles in the hands of Gascons thought less likely to be able to take a stand against the French were resumed by the seneschal, as, for instance, St Macaire which, in 1235, was recovered on the grounds that it was not expedient for its custodians, the commune of Bordeaux, to hold it in time of hostilities.35 Mercenaries who had taken advantage ·of the disturbed condition of the duchy after Louis VIII's invasion were ejected from the castles they retained as, for example, from Veyrines in 1243.36 Although there were still failures, as local lords, for instance, resorted to private war or entered into confederacies with the kings of Castile, Navarre and Aragon, and, although some seneschals, like Nicholas de Meulles (1243- 1245), appear to have been less successful in containing the problems than others. especially within the towns where the communal movement had taken hold, a significant start was made after 1227 to impose a much firmer political control on the duchy, exercised through the seneschal, than had been demonstrated hitherto. It is in this context that Henry III's own appearances in the duchy in 1230 and 1243 to take the homages of his vassals, and, again, in 1253- 1254 but this time to restore political stability and to right the wrongs done by Simon de Montfort, seem so significant. Less predictable was the reaction of the Gascons to the invasion of 1224. Although we have noted the cooperation of some with the French, they were clearly the exception. Many of the towns immediately set about strengthening their defences. Dax, for instance rebuilt its ramparts and Bordeaux, Bayonne and La Reole built or renewed parts of their walls after the French attack. 37 Local taxes were raised in the Landes in 1241, without apparent objection, to build two new castles at Arjusanx and Sabres.38 In fact there was such cooperation between the seneschals and local lords under the threat of a French incursion that some degree of common purpose · seems to have resulted. It was Edward I's case, at the end of the century, that Gascony was an allod and the principal clauses of the Treaty of Paris of 1259 imply that the French were fully aware of the situation. Although the sources are not explicit at this time, the Gascon reaction to the French invasion of 1224 suggests that the native Gascons too were already familiar with the claim.

36

England and Europe in the Reign of Henry III

Raising the revenue needed to pay for the defence of the king's Gascon interests was also the responsibility of the seneschal and, as custos of the land, in the first instance, this had to be paid for out of the income generated by the office. There was no Gascon exchequer to begin with, Bordeaux castle serving as a place of deposit from late in John's reign with the local baillis, who did not account centrally, retaining any money collected locally until it was specifically assigned by the seneschal. The seneschal was therefore frequently left short of the cash to meet his requirements and so resorted to loans to pay his way. Once again, it was the events of 1224 which produced the impetus for change. But it was still necessary in the 1230s for the seneschal to finance his administration by way of bonds repayable either in Bordeaux or, increasingly, because the Gascon economy did not pay its way before around the middle of the century, in England, while, at the same time, the seneschals frequently sought special arrangements with the king for refunding the costs of any warfare in the duchy. It was however during the year that Henry spent in Gascony after the disastrous military campaign in Saintonge that he appears to have realised that a dedicated financial officer was required to relieve the burdens now being placed upon the seneschal. Henry of Wingham, a chancery clerk in the royal administration at the time, and later the royal chancellor, was nominated as the king was about to leave the duchy for England in September 1243 'to receive all the rents and issues of the land of Gascony and Oleron' and so became the first recorded financial official by name in Gascony.39 He bore no formal title as yet although he was later styled 'the king's chamberlain', technically acted as a receiver of the revenues of the Gascon baillis, and used facilities at the abbey of Sainte Croix in Bordeaux rather than in the castle there. As an officer in the royal administration he was not yet performing the duties of the Constable of Bordeaux and should be regarded as no more than the seneschal's named assistant.40 But as a pointer to the way in which offices in the duchy evolved into permanent positions with clearly defined responsibilities in the period after 1224 these were important developments, for they typify the slow institutional evolution that occurred throughout the European bureaucracies from the twelfth century onwards. The first bearer of the title Constable of Bordeaux, the financial officer for the duchy, was Roger of Frampton, a clerk in the service of the Lord Edward, appointed in the early autumn of 1254 as the king made way in Gascony for the administration of his son.41 But he was clearly subordinate to the seneschals who, for the time being, were almost certainly still the king's nominees. More significant was his successor Bernard Ayzon because of the specific institutional developments associated with him.42 For instance, he built the hall in Bordeaux castle where the cash from the Great Custom of Bordeaux was collected and he presided over what was being called the scaccarium burdegale, an office of account, from 1260. 43 In addition he was a member of a tribunal of three, the proto court of appeal for the duchy, which dealt with cases in which the baillis had either failed to do justice or had given incorrect judgments. It was this tribunal which is first recorded in October 1255 as using an official seal which was given to the Constable's safekeeping.44 The seal soon came to be used to seal the judicial acts of the court of Gascony and was used by the seneschal for his own administrative purposes. By 1289 it had become sigillum ducatus. 45

Reconfiguring the Angevin Empire

37

The periodic presence of the king did relatively little to disturb the evolution of these administrative changes in the duchy. When the king was present in Gascony, the seneschal's authority declined. In 1230, for instance, Henry III's visit was for the principal purpose of introducing himself to his Gascon subjects, to secure their allegiances and to receive their homages and fealties, with the seneschal acting as the king's subordinate. In 1242-1243, at least four men held the title seneschal during the king's presence; one was Rostein del Soler, a member of the prominent Bordeaux family, but the other three, John Mansel, Herbert fitzMatthew and John fitzGeoffrey were all members of Henry's curia, while others who had previously served in the office, such as Hubert Ruse and Hugues de Vivonne, or, like Nicholas de Meulles and Guillaume de Bueil, were shortly to take up appointment, exercised executive authority dealing, it seems, with essentially Gascon issues on the king's behalf. 46 This clearly cut across the role of the seneschal and diminished his independent authority. But, also in 1242-1243, Henry III appointed William Longespee as capitaneus in expeditione specifically to take charge of military operations in Saintonge, rather than relying upon the seneschal to lead the local militia, while the king devoted much of his time in the duchy, as in 1230, to the taking of homages with his seneschal in attendance. 47 It was at an assembly of Gascon notables in May 1242 that Henry III secured perhaps his most significant political success in the duchy by receiving the promise of homage of Gaston VII as vicomte of Bearn. 48 Although Gaston created difficulties even so for Henry, by 1254 he had come to terms with the king and his son and remained loyal to both for some years thereafter. The ability of Henry III to attract former vassals back to his circle was a cause of some optimism while the king's ability to secure pareage agreements with other vassals offered some prospect of the piecemeal recovery of former Angevin territories. In 1253 and 1254, Henry again spent a disproportionate amount of his time taking the homages of his subjects, just as Edward I spent much of the period between his accession to the throne in 1272 and his return to England in August 1274 receiving recogniciones feodorum from his Gascon subjects. These contacts were essential to build a personal bond between the king and his vassals, to publicise feudal relationships but also to cement the constitutional relationship between the king and his subjects. Throughout these periods the king acted as he would have done had he been in England presiding over the court coram ipso rege, exercising justice in curia nostra coram nobis, hearing suits according to Gascon law and custom but also, as necessary, dealing with issues concerning his dominions north of the Channel. It was still an age of personal monarchy in which his dominions were governable from wherever the king happened to be within them. In 1242-1243, Henry had his great seal with him and issued writs without distinguishing between their English and Gascon content. A separate Charter Roll was not kept in England during the king's absence. Charters, which were entered on this occasion on a joint roll of patents and charters, were drawn up by the king's chancery clerks who happened to be in Gascony. The king still supplied the same unifying presence at the centre of his government that he had done in the days of Henry II. But in 1253-1254, reflecting the increased sophistication of royal government by the middle of the century, a special seal was created for the king's

38

England and Europe in the Reign of Henry ll/

use in Gascony, significantly called sigillum Vasconie, with the promise that writs issued under it would be confirmed under the great seal later on, if necessary.49 Restoring the authority of the king-duke in Gascony after 1224 was a slow business requiring infinite patience and tact, and some headway was made in the quarter of a century between Louis VIII's invasion and Henry III's appointment of Simon de Montfort, in 1248, with a seven-year mandate and an ambiguous status to restore order. In Gascony, it proved to be a bad political mistake and Henry's reasons for his choice have never been adequately explained. Simon's methods in dealing with those who opposed him in the towns and elsewhere were draconian imprisonment, exile, arbitrary arrest - and were at variance with the approach adopted by the administration hitherto. so In the end Henry had to show himself in person in the duchy and, at the Gascons' request, establish the authority there of his fourteen-year-old son, the Lord Edward. It was an astute move because it was made in response to the Gascons' own demands and because it accompanied the king's creation of Edward's appanage on terms explicitly stating that none of the lands he was given including Gascony and the island of Oleron could be alienated from the crown of England.s1 Henry was certainly adroit enough on this occasion to link local demands with the crown's constitutional interest. The Angevin dominions in the thirteenth century were a rump of what they had once been; they were not quite an empire, but something rather short of that was recreated in the half century or so after the Joss of La Rochelle. The reality, however, was that what was reconstructed had become politically and institutionally much stronger because so much had to be reconstituted from first principles. A major consequence of this change was that the Gascon and English economies became enmeshed and increasingly interdependent during the course of the thirteenth century. Wines bought in Gascony and shipped through Bordeaux, where those of non-denizen merchants attracted the levy of the Great Custom of Bordeaux, found particularly dependable markets in Bristol and London.52 Grain, salt-fish, pottery and timber frequently found their way in the reverse direction encouraging the development of the monoculture that Gascony had become by the later years of the century. Loans from Bordeaux merchants, often repayable in England, and loans to assist the ducal administration to run its affairs redeemable on Gascon sources ensured that a commercial as well as a military interdependence also developed as Gascons answered the king's summons to serve in England and his English subjects took service in Gascony. The two parts of the thirteenth century royal dominions now became more closely linked than ever, arguably both part of a single economic and political unit. Just at the point at which, in 1259, a fully operative administrative system had emerged in Gascony from the wreck of the disaster of the period 1205 to 1224, the Treaty of Paris was ratified by the English and French kings. As a peace treaty intended to bring an end to the hostilities between the Angevins and Capetians, it was certainly welcome to both monarchs. Looking back, Henry could have viewed with some satisfaction the administrative and institutional advances made within his continental dominions in his reign so far. The Angevin empire had not so much been reconstituted but reformed and reconfigured on most modest lines. On the other hand, had Henry had the ability to look forward he could only have seen the disasters in Anglo-French relations with which we are all so familiar.

Reconfiguring the Angevin Empire

39

Notes 1 J. Bradbury, Philip Augustus (London, 1998), 156--7. 2 J.C. Holt, 'The end of the Anglo-Norman Realm', Proceedings of the British Academy, 61 (1975), 239-40. 3 J. Dunbabin, France in the Making 843-1180 (Oxford, 1985), 346. 4 J.-P. Trabut-Cussac, L'Administration Anglaise en Gascogne so us Henry Ill et Edouard I de 1254 a 1307 (Geneva, 1972), was published posthumously. Trabut-Cussac was violently attacked in the street in Madrid in 1966 and finally died of his injuries in January 1969. 5 Y. Renouard, 'Les Institutions du Duche d'Aquitaine (des origines a 1453)', Histoire des Institutions jran9aises au Moyen Age: tome i, Institutions Seigneuriales (Paris, 1957), 167. 6 J. Gillingham, The Angevin Empire (London, 1984 ), 84. 7 J. Le Patourel, 'The Plantagenet Dominions', History 50 (1965), 289-308. 8 The county of La Marche first transferred to the mouvance of the king of France in 1201, after John's marriage to Isabella. The county of Toulouse and the vicomte of Limoges moved to a Capetian allegiance in 1202. In 1204 the county of Perigord followed. The county of Angouleme, Isabella's inheritance, remained in Angevin hands until 1224, when, after the marriage of Isabella and the Count of LaMarche, Hugues X, admitted the overlordship of Louis VIII. 9 Robin Studd, 'The Marriage of Henry of Almain and Constance of Beam', Thirteenth Century England Ill, eds P.R. Coss and S.D. Lloyd (Woodbridge, 1986), 162. 10 ' ... E de ce que nos au roi Dangleterre eases hairs avons done enfiez e en demaines li rois Dangleterre et si hoir feront homage lige a nose a noz hairs rois de France, e ausi de Bordiaus e de Baeone e de Gascoigne et de tote Ia terre que il tient de9a Ia mer Dangleterre en fiez e en demaines e des isles, saucune en i a que li rois Dangleterre tiegne qui soient del roiaume de France ... ' 11 Studd, 'The Marriage of Henry of Almain and Constance of Beam', 162. 12 For example, Savaric de Mauleon was seneschal of Poitou from 1205 to at least 1209 and seneschal of Gascony in 1208-1209, and served again as joint seneschal from 1221-1224; Renaud de Pons served as joint seneschal in 1213 and again 1215-1217. Geoffrey de Neville was seneschal of Poitou, Gascony and the adjacent county of Perigord and Limoges, and of the Agenais and Quercy from 1218-1219. 13 For example, Aimeri de Roche was seneschal of the Limousin, 1214; Geoffroi Tison, seneschal of Perigord, 1214; Barthelemy du Puy, seneschal of the Angoumois. 12141218. 14 John, for instance, was in Aquitaine in each of the four years between 1199 and 1202. 15 Cf., for instance, CPR 1225-32, 507. 16 CPR, 1225-32, 244-5. 17 CPR, 1232-47, 313. 18 Ibid., 382. 19 Ibid., 487. 20 This in itself was a novelty and contrasts with the usual appointment of the seneschal 'during pleasure'. De Montfort's terms were financial assistance in the event of war, the repair and/or building of castles at the king's expense, the service of 50 knights for a year and a grant of 2000 marks. 21 Jean de Grilly, seneschal of Gascony from c. September 1278, and again from 1283-87, is recorded as receiving £2000 tournois at least twice (Roles Gascons, II, 302; PRO, Exchequer Accts, Various 176/13, no. 3). John de Vaux was granted an identical annual wage in 1283 (RG, II, 738). But as 'acting' seneschal, during Edward I's presence in the

40

22 23 24 25 26 27 28

29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48

England and Europe in the Reign of Henry lli

duchy, in 1287, Vaux was paid lOs. per day for the 178 days he held office (PRO, Misc. Books, 201, fos. 79, 94) while John de Havering was paid only £73 4s. for the whole year he held office from 20 November 1288 (PRO, Pipe Roll 138, rot. 26). CPR, 1225-1232, 502-04, 506-07. Cf., for example, CPR, 1232-57, 23, 129, 160. M. Champollion-Figeac, Lettres de Rois, Reines et autres Personnages, i (1839), LXIIILXV, 74-8. CPR, 1232--47, 342. J. Gardelles, Les Chateaux du Moyen Age dans la France du Sud-Ouest: la Gascogne anglaise de 1216 a 1327 (Geneva, 1972), 25. The castle, on the main western pilgrimage route from Bordeaux through the Landes. was built by Richard I on the lands of the vicomte of Dax which had been acquired by the Angevins in 1179 (ibid., 10, 230-31). This ducal castle, standing at the southern limits of the archdiocese of Bordeaux, was also on the pilgrimage route to Santiago. It was detained in the possession of the kingduke until 1220 when it was granted to the del Soler family to settle a debt for wine. Richard of Cornwall subsequently promised it to Geoffrey Rudel, lord of Blaye. But the del Soler family refused to surrender it and continued to hold it until after 1250 (ibid., 10, 95). CPR, 1225-32, 192-3; CR, 1237--42, 121; Gardelles, Les Chateaux du Sud-Ouest, 155-7. CR, 1234-37, 457; Gardelles, Les Chateaux du Sud-Ouest, 213. CPR, 1232-57,9. CPR, 1225-1232, 387; Gardelles, Les Chateaux du Sud-Ouest, 26, 122, 127; Archives Historiques de la Gironde, iv (1863), 15. CPR, 1232--47, 195; Archives Historiques de la Gironde, iv, 15; Gardelles, Les Chateaux du Sud-Ouest, 26. R.-L. Alis, Histoire de Caumont-sur-Garonne (Agen, 1898), 16-17; J. Gardelles, Les Chateaux du Sud-Ouest, 108. CPR, 1232-57, 113. Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, iv, ed. H.R. Luard (Rolls Ser., 1878), 236; Gardelles, Les Chateaux du Sud-Ouest, 232. CPR, 1232--47, 245. Ibid. CPR, 1232--47, 406. Nicholas de Meulles was apppointed seneschal of Gascony shortly before the king left the duchy; he retained office until 1243. This marked a return to relative stability in the tenure of the office. RG, I, 3506, 3541. He continued to act until mid-October 1255 when he was replaced by Bernard Ayzon. PRO, Gascon Roll 2, m.1; RG, I, ii, 4670; P. Chaplais, 'Le Sceau de Ia Cour de Gascogne ou sceau de !'Office de seneschal de Guyenne', Annales du Midi, 67 (1955), 19-29; repr. in his Essays in Medieval Diplomacy and Administration, i (1981 ), vii. PRO, Gascon Roll2, m.1; RG, I, ii, 4674. Cf. above n.41. P.Chaplais, 'Le sceau de Ia cour de Gascogne ... ', 20. Cf., for instance, CPR, 1232--47, 49: FitzMatthew and Meulles acting with the mayor of St Emilion to seize the possessions of those disloyal to the king-duke. Ibid., 342. P. Tucoo-Chala, La Vicomte de Beam et le probleme de sa souverainete (Bordeaux, 1961), 57-62: the homage was finally performed at Bordeaux on 23 December 1242.

Reconfiguring the Angevin Empire

41

49 P. Chaplais, 'Le sceau de Ia Cour de Gascogne', 20. 50 Cf., for instance, J.R. Maddicott, Simon de Montfort (Cambridge, 1994), 109. 51 J.R. Studd, 'The Lord Edward and King Henry III', Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 60 (1977), 4-19. 52 J.-P. Trabut-Cussac, 'Les coutumes ou droits de douane per¥US a Bordeaux sur les vins et les marchandises par !'administration anglaise de 1252 a 1307', Annates du Midi 62 (1950), 135-50.

Chapter 3

Henry the Peaceable: Henry III, Alexander III and Royal Lordship in the British Isles, 1249-1272 Michael Brown

Never did any of the English or British kings, in any past time, keep his pledges more faithfully or more steadfastly than this Henry; for, nearly the whole time of his reign, he was looked upon by the kings of Scotland, father and son, as their most faithful neighbour and adviser ... I

The thirteenth-century source used by John de Fordun for his Chronica Gentis Scotorum preserved a view of Henry III which contrasted with its hostility to his father and son. This verdict has generally been followed by later Scottish historians who have presented the reign as a period of peace and stability in the relationship between the two internationally-recognised kingdoms of the British Isles. By comparison with events after 1290 this is undeniable. Peaceful relations with Henry have been used as the external backdrop to the Scottish kings' furthest extension of their lordship and the definition of Scotland as a separate unit of ecclesiastical and secular authority. However, there remain limits to our understanding of the relationship between Henry III and the Scots. The contacts, tensions and rivalries between the two royal lordships were complex and shifting, especially between the accession of Alexander III and the death of Henry III. The years from 1249 to 1272 witnessed changes of major significance across the British Isles. They were not external to Scotland. Relationships between kings, princes and communities in these islands and on the continent provided the wider framework for Scottish politics. This chapter examines the experience of Scotland's monarchy and community against the interplay of these relationships, the most important of which were the policies and ambitions of Henry III.2 Henry's attitude to Scotland assumed an exceptional importance from 1249. The death of King Alexander II of Scotland altered the character and balance of politics in the northern British Isles. An ambitious and able adult was replaced by a child of eight years. The new king, Alexander III, could not be expected to exercise personal royal lordship for a decade and the absence of royal direction put exceptional strains on the political elites of the Scottish realm. In the circumstances of a minority, many members of this elite regarded Henry III as a source of legitimacy and guidance. Their attitude and Henry's involvement in Scotland after 1249 were shaped by the existing relationship between the two realms.

44

England and Europe in the Reign of Henry III

This relationship was not between two entirely separate political units. Its character was shaped by the numerous contacts and overlaps which linked the Scottish king and his realm with the Plantagenet dominions. Most concrete of these were ties of landholding. A significant group of magnates held lands in both kingdoms and the kings of Scots were also English barons. They were lords of Tynedale and of the earldom of Huntingdon and possessed claims to Northumberland, Westmoreland and Cumberland. These claims had a major impact on the relations between Henry III and Alexander II. Between 1215 and 1217, Alexander had pursued his claim to these lands by war and, though he never resorted to arms again, he continued to see possession of these English lordships as a key element of his relations with England. He sought them by diplomacy during the 1220s but once again threatened war on the issue in 1234-1235. The danger Alexander posed was not as an invader. In 1215 he acted as a lord denied his just rights and was accepted as the leader of the northern English rebels. The overlapping interests of the two realms in the north could encourage peace, but also served as a cause of tension. The settlement of the Scottish king's claims at York in 1237 was a recognition of the importance of the issue.3 There were more advantages than simply the avoidance of war in the north to be had from the Scottish king's friendship. During the 1220s, Alexander II worked closely with Henry III's government. Friendship between the kings rested on personal bonds. In July 1221 Alexander married Henry's sister, Joan and, as late as 1231, there were plans for a marriage between Henry himself and Alexander's youngest sister, Margaret. However, the crucial marriage was between Alexander's elder sister (another Margaret) and Hubert de Burgh, justiciar of England and leading figure in the young Henry's government. This marriage, which occurred at the same time as Alexander's own, secured the Scottish king's support, political, military and financial, for the minority regime in England. Between 1223 and 1225, de Burgh's government faced a powerful coalition of enemies throughout the British Isles. In Ireland, Hugh de Lacy with considerable Gaelic support was seeking to recover the earldom of Ulster and forged alliances with Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, prince of Gwynedd and the latter's neighbour, Ranulf, earl of Chester. In this crisis Alexander II aided his brother-in-law, de Burgh. In 1223 he promised Hubert that he would allow no help to reach de Lacy from Scotland and, later in the year, was at Worcester for the opening of the royal campaign in Wales which brought Llywelyn's submission. Alexander's presence signified symbolic, not military support, but he probably sanctioned the intended expedition of his constable, Alan of Galloway, to Ulster the next year. Though this was forestalled by a settlement with de Lacy, the Scottish king had given steady aid to the royal government in its greatest crisis of the 1220s. Alexander's assistance also came in the form of money. In 1225 he gave £1000 to help finance the expedition being sent to defend Gascony against Louis VIII of France and in 1230 he raised an aid of 2000 marks to support Henry's campaign to recover Plantagenet lands and influence in Brittany and Poitou. This latter grant was specifically recorded as a gesture of goodwill not a precedent, but the two subsidies were probably recalled by Henry as further benefits of Scottish support. 4 However, such advantages proceeded from friendship not dominion and, when de Burgh fell from power in 1231-1232, the friendship ended. Alexander saw his

Royal Lordship in the British Isles, 1249-1272

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sister rejected as Henry's bride and sheltered de Burgh and his associates. The rest of Alexander II's reign would not witness a return to the close relations between the two royal governments of the 1220s. The possibility of a royal marriage for his sister, which would have involved a final amicable settlement of Alexander's territorial claims in northern England and brought the Scottish king prestige and influence in England, was over. Alexander renewed his claim for a full coronation at the papal curia, which he had not pressed between 1221 and 1233, and, during the next five years, adopted a belligerent stance towards Henry IIJ.S Between 1232 and 1237, instead of supporting the English king's authority against his opponents, Alexander exploited such opposition to put pressure on his royal brother-in-law. He entered an alliance with Richard Marshal, earl of Pembroke and lord of Leinster, in 1234 during the earl's revolt against Henry. Llywelyn ap lorwerth was also allied to Marshal, and the English king was faced with a potential coalition of the leading prince of native Wales, the greatest lord in the Welsh Marches and English Ireland and the king of Scots. The connection survived Marshal's death in battle in 1234. The next year Richard's brother and successor, Gilbert, married Margaret, Alexander's jilted sister, receiving extensive Scottish lands. Though the match had Henry III's consent, in 1236 Alexander used it to threaten the English king, proposing to wage war against him with the help of Gilbert Marshal and Llywelyn of Gwynedd. 6 Instead of war, these tensions led to the treaty of York in 1237 and the settlement of Alexander's claims in the far north of England. It is a mistake to see this agreement as the resolution of Anglo-Scottish tensions. In the early 1240s a new dispute brought the kings to the brink of war. While the north of England was the setting for the main confrontation, the clash concerned a range of issues and the general relations between the two kings. Henry had given Alexander authority over the far north and custody of Newcastle when he departed for France in 1242. He was treating the Scottish king as a friend, and the latter's activities in the region were not a direct cause of the crisis in their relationship. This occurred inside Scotland where the murder of a Scottish noble, Patrick of Atholl, by his enemies, the Bisset family, in 1242 provoked an aristocratic coalition led by Walter and Alexander Comyn, the earls of Menteith and Buchan, Patrick, earl of Dunbar and William, earl of Mar. Although he intervened in favour of Walter Bisset and his kin, King Alexander was forced to bow to the pressure of these magnates and exile the accused. 7 This was a conflict between Alexander's vassals within his realm and did not impinge directly on the dominions of Henry III. Henry's intervention in the dispute demonstrated that the English king did not view his rights as Alexander's lord as being confined to the latter's role as a baron in England. Walter Bisset approached Henry in Gascony. He asked for the king's help, not as Alexander's neighbour but as his lord. Bisset claimed that, as Henry's vassal, Alexander had no right to disinherit men without his lord's permission. He levelled other charges against the Scottish king. Alexander was said to be harbouring Henry's rebel, Geoffrey Marsh. Marsh was a former partisan of Richard Marshal, Alexander's former ally, and his link to the Scottish king recalled this earlier confrontation. The Scottish king was further accused of fortifying the Scottish border and planning to ally with Henry's French enemies after his marriage, in 1239, to the daughter of Enguerrand de Couci, a major vassal of Louis IX of France. According to Matthew Paris, the final spark came when Alexander responded to Henry's accusations by

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stating that 'not even a particle of the kingdom of Scotland did he hold of the king of England' .s From April 1244, Henry prepared a military expedition against Alexander on a considerable scale. His preparations were not motivated by a desire to establish direct lordship over the Scottish realm, by immediate fear of a military alliance between Louis IX and Alexander II, or even by anxiety about the Scottish king's ambitions in the north. Instead Henry's aim was to make a forceful but general point about the status of the king of Scots. Henry had given Alexander authority in the far north of England as his vassal and agent, but Alexander had encouraged castle-building in the marches of his own realm, received Henry's enemies into his own protection and formed links with the English king's continental rivals. In return, Henry was appealed to for redress by lords exiled from Scotland. In all these issues Henry believed he possessed rights as Alexander's lord. Although this lordship related formally only to the latter's lands in England, to Henry it also implied general obligations of friendship and support from the vassal to his superior, obligations which did not stop at the Anglo-Scottish border. These were nebulous but significant for the English king and he probably regarded Alexander's actions as violating them. Henry's campaign of 1244 had the aim of forcing Alexander to acknowledge his position, while the Scottish king regarded himself as defending his rights as ruler of a realm which lay firmly outside Henry's authority. The speedy settlement arrived at between the two armies outside Newcastle in early August represented a compromise. Alexander promised to 'preserve good faith . . . and love' to his 'liege lord' Henry and neither ally with the king's enemies or 'stir up or make war' which would harm the English king or his dominions. In return Alexander gained Henry's recognition of his own right to make marriages, though it was also agreed to a match between his new-born son, the future Alexander III, and Henry's daughter, Margaret. Henry had obtained an agreement which placed limits on Alexander's future behaviour. Though Alexander gave away nothing from his rights as king of Scots, after the events of the preceding decade it was a not insignificant statement of his political position.9 Given his preparations, Henry may have wished to press the issue further. His readiness to negotiate was probably not the product of his 'gentle heart' but of wider problems. Many northern English magnates had an interest in preventing open warfare between the kings and it was probably whilst Henry was in the north that he received news that almost the whole of native Wales was in arms against him. His efforts to raise fresh resources to deal with this more direct challenge would play a part in sparking a political crisis in England during the autumn. Not for the first or last time, the Scots benefited from being only one of the manifold concerns and problems of the Plantagenets. 10 The confrontation of 1244 was linked directly to such wider concerns, not just for Henry but also for Alexander. Despite the Welsh war of 1244-1245, events in the British Isles during the preceding decade appeared to favour Henry. The deaths of Llywelyn ap lorwerth of Gwynedd in 1240 and of Gilbert Marshal in 1241 deprived Alexander of his allies of the previous decade and may have encouraged Henry's bellicose attitude. However, the influence and authority of both kings away from their royal heartlands had been increasing during the years before the crisis. Henry's position in Wales was greatly strengthened by a series of deaths in the house of Gwynedd and the division of their principality between the sons and

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grandsons ofLlywelyn ap Iorwerth, while the king's authority in the Welsh Marches and the lordship of Ireland was increased by a series of deaths amongst his magnates which Jed to the final extinction of the Marshal family in 1245 and the de Lacys in 1241-1242. The reach, resources and relative power of royal government in Wales and Ireland rose to levels not attained since King John's activities in the west between 1209 and 1212. However, the 1230s also saw the further and steady extension of Scottish royal lordship into the west and north of the mainland. In terms of the relations between Henry III and Alexander II, the crucial events were the deaths of Alan, lord of Galloway, in 1234 and of Hugh de Lacy, earl of Ulster, in 1242. These magnates acted as the agents of the two royal governments and as great lords, rivals and allies in the lands and seas on each side of the North Channel. Following their deaths without recognised male heirs, the kings ensured their own authority was established in the earldom of Ulster and the lordship of Galloway. As a result, for the first time, royal officials, Henry's bailies in Ulster and Alexander's justiciar of Galloway and sheriff of Wigtown, faced each other across the narrow seas. In the 1240s the channel became a clear frontier between the two royal lordships of the British Isles for the first time. II The interests of the two crowns in this region often coincided. In particular, there were mutual anxieties about the activities of the Hebridean magnates. These lords held lands in western Scotland as well as the Isles, and their interests as allies and mercenaries extended to Gaelic Ireland. They were, therefore, a threat to both kings' interests. However, in 1244 this new borderland of royal lordships added to the tensions. Scottish attacks on Ireland were one of the charges levelled against Alexander in that year and Henry sought to raise an expedition from English and Gaelic vassals in his lordship to threaten south-west Scotland. In the settlement at Newcastle, Alexander and his men specifically promised not to stir up trouble in Ireland, but disturbances in Ulster and around the Clyde continued. These clashes were not the direct product of royal competition. Instead they had much to do with the continuing feuds over the Galloway inheritance which spanned the North Channel. It was the murder of the last male member of the house of Galloway, Alan's nephew, Patrick of Atholl, which had sparked the whole crisis. Local warfare between Patrick's killers, the Bissets, and the dead man 's half-brother, Alan, son of the Earl, began in 1243 and lasted until 1248. Patrick raided his enemies' lands in Ulster and Walter and John Bisset seized and fortified the castle of Dunaverty in Kintyre, which Alan then took by siege. Henry III had deliberately employed the Bissets in Ulster and in 1248 allowed John to buy corn from the earldom to provision Dunaverty. Alexander II's relations with Alan are less clear but the latter clearly had powerful friends amongst the Bissets' aristocratic enemies.12 More directly, Alexander went straight from the settlement at Newcastle into a sustained attempt to extend his rule to the west of his kingdom. The Isles, from Man to Lewis, were under the lordship of the king of Norway, Hakon IV, the third sovereign royal lord in the British Isles. Though distant from this western province, Hakon's influence in the Isles was far from negligible and had been maintained by recent expeditions. When Alexander II tried to buy King Hakon's rights in the region, he was rebuffed. In response, Alexander launched a military expedition to Argyll and the Isles. The principal aim of this was to force the magnates of the Hebrides, and, in particular, Ewen MacDougall of Lorn, to recognise Alexander's

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authority beyond the shores of his kingdom. The campaign was a direct assault on Hakon's rights and a forceful attempt to shift the boundaries between the different kingdoms in the British Isles. It was criticised by contemporaries and must have been unwelcome to Henry III too. The English crown enjoyed friendly relations with the kings of Norway and Henry had no reason to wish Hakon's lordship replaced by that of the Scottish king. His particular concern was the status of Man and its kings. Henry had maintained long-standing bonds with the rulers of the island. During the 1230s and 1240s, Henry had guaranteed the security of Man and rewarded its king, Harald, for his role in safeguarding the seas between England and Ireland. The English king's role as patron and ally was signified by Henry's knighting of Harald in 1246. The death of King Harald, drowned as he returned from Norway as Hakon's designated deputy in the whole of the Isles, left Man without a ruler and weakened the Norwegian king's ability to oppose Alexander in the west. In connection with events in Ulster, Henry III must have worried about his own interests in the region in the face of the Scottish king's ambitions. 13 Alongside such territorial tensions were other issues. During the later 1240s, Alexander II once again sought the right to receive full coronation from the curia.' 4 Henry's agents blocked the request by claiming that the Scottish king was his vassal. It was an argument which lay at the heart of Henry's attitude to Scotland. The English king intervened in Scottish affairs rarely. For the most part, he recognised Alexander's rights to rule over his realm. However, Henry was sensitive to perceived challenges to his own status and to his interests in the British Isles. The king of Scots was one of many great lords on the fringes of his rule from Foix and Beam in the Pyrenees northwards, with whom he had to maintain a working relationship. In dealing with Alexander II, Henry could not ignore these wider concerns. Time and again relations with the Scottish king had become involved with Plantagenet interests in the rest of the British Isles and on the continent. By securing recognition of his rights as Alexander's lord, Henry sought to prevent Scottish support for disaffected Welsh or English magnates, to guarantee the interests of his friends and vassals in the northern British Isles and even gain access to the resources of the Scottish realm as during the 1220s. Alexander's actions suggest a very different perspective. Though aware of his duties as an English baron, he regarded himself as Henry's equal more than his vassal and the settlement of 1244 had not limited Alexander's quest for greater rights, either ideological or territorial. The tension between these two positions had emerged repeatedly during the three decades before 1249 and, unlike the territorial dispute over northern England, had not been resolved. In its context, news of Alexander II's death in the Isles cannot have been unwelcome to Henry III. The absence of an adult king of Scots meant that he possessed new advantages in his dealings with Scotland during the decade from 1249. However, it is striking that his aims and objectives did not alter fundamentally from the earlier years of his reign. On two occasions after 1249 Henry came north to exert personal influence on Scotland. Both interventions, in 1251 and 1255, saw Henry act as an arbitrator with considerable, declared Scottish support. Henry was not hungry to exploit the weakness of the Scottish realm under a child king. Two years passed from the death of Alexander II before Henry became directly involved in Scottish politics. The end of Alexander's ambitions had reduced Henry's need to consider his relations with Scotland. When formal contacts occurred they centred,

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not on earlier tensions, but on the renewal of ties between the two royal houses through the marriage of the young Alexander III to Henry's daughter, Margaret. This was not simply an external alliance. The wedding of the couple at York over Christmas 1251 was used as a display of Henry's personal lordship over his son-inlaw. On Christmas Day the young king was knighted by Henry. The next morning (St Stephen's Day) the young couple was married. During the next week Alexander remained in York, performing homage for his English lands. He was also reportedly asked to pay homage to Henry for Scotland. This request was rejected and Henry did not press the issue. Instead he stressed that nothing at York prejudiced Alexander's rights in his realm. Though he registered a claim to lordship over Scotland, Henry's chief concern was to establish a less defined superiority over Alexander. Thus, the knighting of the king of Scots was not demanded as a right but marked Alexander's 'reverence and honour to so great a prince'. Whilst at York, Henry oversaw the removal of Alexander's chief advisers, including the justiciar, Alan Durward. His statement that this did not form a precedent did not remove its significance. By issuing pardons to outlaws at the request of his daughter and son-in-law, by entertaining his guests in lavish style and by being asked for, and giving judgement in the rivalries between Alexander's councillors, Henry was acting as the young king's protector, demonstrating a personal relationship between them in which he was the patron. IS Though Scottish suspicions remained, as Alexander's father by marriage and in chivalry, Henry had formed new justifications for exerting influence on Scotland. His concerns for the health and safety of the royal couple were a significant factor and valuable justification for Henry's second intervention in Scottish politics in 1255. Though accompanied by an armed escort, Henry chose to keep the majority of his English supporters outside Scotland. He relied on diplomacy, surprise and the actions of his Scottish adherents. Once again Henry was taking a limited approach as the protector of Alexander, his 'chief adviser' not his superior lord. Although the expedition witnessed Henry's one entry into Scotland, on 20 September 1255, when he rode to meet Alexander and Margaret at Roxburgh, he stated on that day that, once again, the rights of the king had not been reduced by his intervention. The visit of the Scottish king and queen to Henry's court during July 1256 reaffirmed the bonds of kinship which were central to the English king's claims to a greater role in Scotland.l6 Though personal obligations were an important factor in Henry's dealings with Scotland, the king's attitudes were also driven by material objectives. In particular, Henry sought Scottish support for his interests across the British Isles and Western Europe. The Scottish marriage was the least spectacular of a series of dynastic plans designed to extend Henry's network of kin and allies. These plans would mark a shift in the king's goals and was signalled by Henry's decision to take the cross in March 1250. This would be superseded by the efforts to secure the imperial title for Henry's brother, Richard, and the Sicilian throne for his son, Edmund. These objectives required huge funds. Henry's search for resources has long been recognised as a cause in the political crisis which erupted in England in 1258. It also formed a major element in Henry's relationship with Scotland during the years when that realm lacked a king. Even before the marriage of Alexander and Margaret, Henry had approached the pope seeking an extension of the ecclesiastical tax he

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had been given to include Scotland. In April 1251 Innocent IV rejected this request as 'unheard of in another's kingdom'. However, after the marriage Henry anticipated that Scottish support would materialise for his schemes as in 1225 and 1230 as a result of his influence with the new councillors. Between July 1253 and December 1254, Henry was on the continent. His principal aim was to secure his hold on Gascony. Faced by local opposition led by Gaston de Beam who had support from the king of Castile, Henry sought military support from his vassals and allies. In late 1253 he wrote to the king of Scots asking him to summon the prelates and magnates of his kingdom in late February to meet Henry's envoys from Gascony. Henry hoped that the Scots would give him 'council and aid' in his 'arduous and urgent affairs'. He asked for this help 'by reason of the bond and alliance concluded between us which requires that we make known to you and your liegemen all arduous and urgent matters touching our estate, and you to us in return'. The English king was making a request as a friend and kinsman not a demand as lord, but must have expected support. His success is hard to gauge but was probably less than he had hoped. Several knights associated with Alexander's councillors served Henry in Gascony in 1254, but the greatest impression was made by their enemy, Alan Durward. Durward used his presence to make a point about the limited aid the council had sent to their royal sponsor,l7 Limited aid from the council for Henry was a factor in his growing hostility to the men around the Scottish king during 1255. At the same time, Henry's need for Scottish financial aid had suddenly increased. During 1254 he had negotiated an agreement with the pope by which his son would be invested with the Sicilian throne. In return Henry would pay over £90,000 to the papacy and finance a Mediterranean war. He received papal assistance in efforts to raise the money. Innocent ordered the Scottish clergy to raise money for the English king. In May 1254 a twentieth of Scottish ecclesiastical incomes was assigned to Henry for the next three years and in 1255 the levy was extended for three more years. After Gascony, Henry may have had doubts about the willingness of the Scots to raise funds for his needs. The intervention of September 1255 was designed in part to form a council which was more responsive to these needs. By early 1256, serious efforts were being made to raise clerical taxation in Scotland. Once again Henry declared that this did not prejudice the Scottish king's rights and the pope instructed his agent to persuade the Scottish prelates to contribute either through taxation or by informal contributions. However the chaplain was also told to keep silent concerning the privileges and independence of the Scottish church, suggesting papal awareness that these rights were being trespassed upon. IS The ambitious marriage diplomacy which accompanied Henry's European schemes also affected Scotland. The marriage of Henry's elder son, Edward to Eleanor, sister of the king of Castile, was designed to secure Gascony and attract a crusading ally. By 1255 Henry may have hoped to win Castilian support for the conquest of Sicily and these plans involved him in dealing with a ruler much closer to Scotland. Around 1255-1256 negotiations were opened for a marriage between Henry's daughter, Beatrice, and Magnus, eldest son of Hakon IV, king of Norway. A second match between Hakon's daughter and the brother of the king of Castile was also sponsored by Henry. Henry hoped that Hakon, who had also taken the cross, would divert his fleet from the Holy Land to Sicily. This planned alliance between the

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kings of England and Norway had an obvious significance for the Scottish realm, especially in the isles and coastlands of the west where all three kingdoms met. 19 The extension of the Scottish crown's influence into the Hebrides had come to a sudden halt with Alexander II's death. The early 1250s saw Henry and Hakon take a much more influential role in the region, combining to remove local threats. The most obvious of these was the attempt by Magnus, brother of the drowned King Harald of Man, to seize the island from rival claimants. In 1250 Magnus allied with Ewen MacDougall, the leading Hebridean magnate and in 1251 he sought Irish aid but he failed to impose his rule by force. Henry III ordered action against what he saw as the invasion of 'the lands of the king of Norway' . It was only by recognising the lordship of the two kings that Magnus obtained his lands. In 1253 he departed for Norway having placed himself under Henry's protection. With the English king's sponsorship, Magnus was 'honourably received' by Hakon and in 1254 returned to be accepted as king by the Manxmen. He was not the only westerner at Hakon's court. Ewen MacDougall and his cousin, Dugald MacRuairi of Garmoran, were also present, indicating the Norwegian king's influence. 20 Henry's intervention in Scotland in September 1255 was marked by his increased interference in the west, as in other areas. His desire to further his own and Hakon's interests was clearly in his mind. On 21 September, the day after the new Scottish council had been appointed, Henry placed Ewen MacDougall under his protection. The king promised to ensure that Ewen was not permanently deprived of his Scottish lordship in Lorn in northern Argyll, taken from him in 1249. Henry was protecting an Islesman who had received Hakon's favour, mirroring the relations between Magnus of Man and the two kings. The following Easter this relationship was further enhanced when Magnus attended Henry's court and was knighted by the English king. The new authority of the Norwegian king in the west was reflected by a reference to him being made king 'over all the isles which his predecessors had held' in a northern English chronicle.2I By cooperating with Hakon in the Isles, Henry probably hoped to win that king's aid in his wider ambitions. However, the influence and friendship he established with the Scottish and Norwegian kings allowed Henry to hold the balance in this sensitive maritime zone. His aims were the prevention of conflicts which would threaten the stability and balance of the region and he sought to achieve them by regulating the status of island magnates, supporting those who recognised his influence. Those who did not accept Henry's personal lordship faced the hostility of all three kings in the region. In February 1256 Henry ordered that Angus MacDonald of Islay, who had sought protection from neither Henry nor Hakon, should not be received in the lordship of Ireland. The Scottish king's officials assisted in the action against him by providing the English with the names of Angus's adherents. Henry's main concern was the security of Ireland and his lands in eastern Ulster in particular. Angus 's family had previously supported Gaelic Irish leaders in Ulster and Henry feared that he would support the leading Gaelic lord in the province, Brian O'Neill. O'Neill had successfully resisted efforts to force his submission and had 'devastated the plain land of Ulster' in 1253. By extending influence with the Scots and Norwegians, with the Manx king and some Hebrideans, Henry III sought to keep the peace in a way which would bolster his position in northern Ireland.22

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Influence and indirect involvement also characterised Henry's participation in the politics of the Scottish realm. In the early 1250s the realm's political elites looked to the English king as a source of guidance, leadership and support. For these magnates, Henry possessed the means to remove their rivals from office whilst claiming to respect their king's rights. In early 1252 one group of lords, led by the earls of Menteith and Mar persuaded Henry to act against Alan Durward and his allies. Menteith's family, the Comyns, and their allies secured control of the king's council and offices with Henry's backing during the festivities surrounding Alexander III's wedding at York. Three years later, it was Durward who sought the English king's intervention and encouraged Henry's dissatisfaction with Alexander's councillors. However, Scottish magnates seized the king, with only limited direct support from Henry, and carried Alexander to Roxburgh. Henry's role was to provide physical backing from this distance and to legitimise the transfer of power. He confirmed letters issued by Alexander which appointed a formal council of fifteen to govern Scotland until 1262. These letters also excluded a group of prelates and lords, including the Comyns and Mar, from office and access to the king. Henry's consent would be required to end the authority of this council or restore those excluded from power. Though he promised that these letters would be returned at the end ofthe minority and that no prejudice would be done to the king of Scots by his role, Henry had secured formal rights to determine the personnel and, by implication, the practice of Scottish government.23 Such powers were not the long-cherished aim of the English king. Unlike other elements of his relations with Scotland and its king in the 1250s, they did not develop from Henry's goals before 1249. His interventions in Scottish political society stemmed from appeals made to him by Scots. The value of this role to Henry was as the means to a number of ends. He must have hoped that a grateful minority regime would not cause him the difficulties which Alexander II had, would show him respect and add to his prestige and would provide him with active support. Henry also had reason to be anxious about the consequences of nonintervention. Open conflict between Scottish magnates was a threat not an opportunity. It would, and did, impinge on Henry's lands and interests. Henry's approach to Scottish politics remained fluid. The English king displayed no set attitude to Scottish magnates. The men favoured by Henry in 1251 were those blamed by him for the disturbances in 1244. One of them, Alan, son of the earl, was pardoned by Henry at York for his attack on Ireland. The English king sought to use lords with lands in both realms to influence Scottish government. Henry possessed stronger formal and informal bonds with cross-border magnates like John Balliol and Robert Ros and hoped this would make them direct the council in his interest. Their failure incurred Henry's serious hostility but shows the fragility of the king's influence. The truth was that Henry's actions at York were no guarantee of the support or goodwill of great Scottish magnates like Walter Comyn, earl of Menteith or William, earl of Mar. The greater formal rights which Henry secured in 1255 reflected his awareness of this. He wanted the ability to manage the young king's government without personal intervention or the open intrusion of English servants. His promise to protect Ewen MacDougall of Lorn in 1255 indicated Henry's belief that, as Alexander III's 'principal adviser', he could direct the actions of the latter's council. It showed a confidence in his ability to exert

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unprecedented influence over what was a separate political society with minimal effort, which would prove to be misplaced.24 Henry's limited involvement in Scotland was a product of his overall outlook. The maintenance of his influence in the kingdom was never much more than a marginal concern. The English king was concerned with Scottish affairs only where they concerned his personal prestige. Only at Christmas 1251 and in September 1255 did Scotland merit Henry's personal involvement. Even on these occasions Henry swiftly became involved in other issues. Alexander's marriage at York was overshadowed by a public clash between the king and Simon de Montfort, while Henry hastened away from Scotland in 1255 to attend his son's investiture as king of Sicily. As a monarch with European ambitions, Henry's need was for a swift but secure resolution of Scottish political disputes.25 The king of England probably returned from Scotland in late September 1255, believing he had achieved this goal. It formed another element in the extension of his influence in the northern and western British Isles which had gained pace since the late 1240s. Henry had imposed the Treaty of Woodstock on the rulers of Gwynedd, Owain and Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, placing unprecedented territorial and political limits on their lordship in north Wales. The king also granted extensive lands to his friends and family in the Welsh Marches and in western Ireland. He marked a further change by giving Ireland and lands in Wales to his heir, Edward, in 1254. These acts were not a masterplan for the consolidation of Plantagenet lordship in the north and west, but Henry was aware of the interconnection of these areas. In early 1256 the king sent out warnings about Manx rebels to the Scottish king and nobility, to English officials in Wales and Ireland and, probably, to princes of Gwynedd. Henry's government was seeking to police a fragmented but strategically vital maritime region which lay between the realms of the British Isles. 26 However, as striking as the advance of Henry's lordship was the way in which his gains unravelled. His extension of royal lordship provoked a backlash. Though this became caught up in the English political crisis of 1258, the reactions of native polities was not dependent on events in England. This was most obvious in Wales. Llywelyn ap Gruffydd had seized sole power in Gwynedd in 1255 and late the next year he swept into Edward's lands in north-east Wales, extending his campaign into Powys and Deheubarth in 1257. Llywelyn claimed to be liberating the Welsh from 'bondage' and scored a string of military successes against English forces. 27 During 1256 and 1257, there were also hesitant but clear signs of growing resistance to Henry's settlement of Scotland. This settlement had excluded a group of magnates from power. These lords had strong reasons for opposing it and refused to seal the document which excluded them. They were not a negligible group. The earls of Menteith, Buchan and Mar were the leaders of the faction to which Alexander II had been forced to bow in 1242. With William, earl of Ross as their ally, they had a secure position in the north. When the new council threatened further action against them, the earls responded defiantly. In the summer of 1256 Henry was preparing to send English troops to the aid of the council but by February 1257 he was responding instead to negotiations between the Scottish parties. These parties looked to Henry to help resolve their disputes. In late July he sent an embassy to hold a council with the Scots 'to terminate and settle disputes stirred up' between them. Embarrassingly,

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however, when the council met at Stirling in August it was used by a group of prelates with Comyn associations to pronounce papal sentences of excommunication against the king's councillors. These sentences were in response to the council's seizure of the temporalities of St Andrews which followed the consecration of a kinsman of the Comyns, master Gamelin, as bishop in late 1255. For the pope's protege, Henry III, this was an added problem. For the Comyns and their allies, it justified an alteration in political tactics. These magnates now claimed to be acting as the defenders of the liberties of the Scottish Church. They allied this to an attack on Henry's settlement which was declared an 'abominable document . . . which might result in the dishonour of the king and kingdom' by the sympathetic Melrose chronicler. Posing as defenders of the royal and ecclesiastical liberties of Scotland, Menteith, Buchan, Mar and their allies claimed the leadership of the realm, perhaps the origin of Matthew Paris's garbled account of them as 'natives', expelling the foreign adherents of king and queen.28 While native blood was no stronger in this group than amongst their enemies, the northern earls lacked close ties with Henry and major English lands.29 As a result they found it easier to abandon the basis of minority politics and openly reject Henry's will. In late October 1257 Menteith, Mar and Buchan seized King Alexander at Kinross and carried him to Stirling. This was not a desperate act by a faction on the ropes. Since late 1255, the Comyns and their allies had successfully defended their interests in Scotland and at the curia, forcing their enemies to negotiate. The decision to seize Alexander was a display of confidence, presented in Scotland as a move to rescue the king from the hands of his discredited, excommunicated councillors and save the realm from interdict. The events of the winter and spring confirm the impression of their ascendancy, though not their unchallenged authority. The king's new keepers distributed offices and extended their influence, particularly in the south-west where John Comyn, Menteith's nephew, was made justiciar of Galloway. By comparison, their enemies waited for Henry's support and Alan Durward went to England before the end of December. In January, Henry ordered his northern barons to be ready to join an expedition to deliver the Scottish king from his 'rebels'. However the crisis was delayed until late March. Though the new Scottish regime sent envoys to Henry asking him to provide representatives to attend a 'parliament' in mid-April, this willingness to talk did not signal a readiness to capitulate to the English king.30 Henry certainly mistrusted them. He ordered his northern sheriffs to raise an army should his 'friends' be attacked and, if peace was kept, then they were to assemble their men at Roxburgh, the base for the coup which Henry had instigated in 1255. The English king was right to be suspicious. The 'adverse party' quickly followed diplomacy with force. In late March the king was at the head of an army which marched on Roxburgh against the 'traitors'. The army, which included a fearsome contingent from Galloway, was clearly raised and led by the Comyns. Their enemies initially offered to negotiate and then fled to England. Henry responded to the 'war and disturbance' by offering bases and troops to Durward and his allies, but their flight suggests that, unlike 1255, there was no wide coalition of magnates waiting for English leadership.3 1 The bellicose approach of the Comyn party from October 1257 did not occur in isolation. Just before the army took the field, on 18 March, the earls of Menteith, Mar, Buchan and Ross and a group of other lords put their names to an alliance

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with Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, named as prince of Wales. The two parties promised mutual aid and agreed to make no peace with Henry or his supporters which did not include the other. Unlike Llywelyn, the Scots were only a party within their realm and were permitted to obey their king's 'strict order'. This was a reasonable precaution with an eye to future shifts of power and it is significant that the Scots did not seek to associate Alexander with the alliance. However, when the agreement was made, these men were still able to use the king against his 'traitors' and their long-term worries did not remove the immediate value of the alliance. Llywelyn and his new allies recognised that they were both objects of Henry III's hostility in early 1258. An agreement to resist the English king in tandem helped both. This sense of shared interest was not without precedents. Alexander II and Llywelyn ap Iorwerth had threatened to ally against Henry in the 1230s and the Scots and Welsh may well have been more closely aware of events in the other realm than is assumed. The seizure of Alexander III occurred after news that Henry had retreated ignominiously from Wales in September 1257 had reached Scotland. If the alliance of March 1258 is a unique survival it is not entirely surprising. In the next two months it proved useful to both parties and especially the Scots. The alliance ensured that Henry's military efforts would be divided between two expeditions. Of these it was the Welsh campaign which drew his personal attention and plans to support the king's 'friends' in the north stalled during April. By mid-May, Henry was seeking a negotiated settlement with the Comyns and their allies. In response to envoys from these lords, Henry asked only for the protection of his friends against new attacks, his daughter's well-being and for discussions between parties to be postponed until September. Until then the king was effectively calling a truce which left his enemies in power. Though he still talked about a campaign in Wales in his letter of 13 May to the Scots, within a week he was in discussions with Llywelyn, concluding a truce with the prince in June.32 The alliance had served both Llywelyn and the Scots lords well, but the ease with which they defied Henry was due to the collapse of the king's authority in England from early April. The formation of the baronial confederation on 7 April, Henry's promise to reform his realm in early May, and the barons' takeover of government at the Oxford parliament in early June corresponded with the gradual abandonment of planned campaigns in Wales and Scotland.33 During the next decade, Henry's political difficulties were a major factor in the distribution of power outside England. In 1258 the English king's wider interests suddenly passed out of his reach. In Scotland the influence he had held since 1255 was already faltering. It now evaporated. Between May and August there was no formal contact with the Scots. Events in the north were not clear but the only formal act of King Alexander, issued in October, was witnessed by Menteith, Mar and their ally, Hugh Barclay, indicating the Comyn party's continued dominance of the king.3 4 During the summer they had probably cemented this dominance by reaching agreement with magnates like Alexander Steward and the earl of Strathearn who had opposed them in 1255 but had not fled to Henry III in 1258. This recognition of the king's new officers and the widening of the regime's support may have been the news which reached England in late August and 'amazed' Henry. The Scots lords around the king were ready to demonstrate that further English involvement was unacceptable. In early September the Scottish king and his council met an English

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embassy at Melrose. They claimed that these envoys planned to repeat the coup of 1255 and seize Alexander. In response, they raised an army and led it to the border at Jedburgh to threaten the 'traitors'. The move was designed to quash any possible challenge to the council's authority and encourage Durward and his allies, who were still in England, to recognise that they would only recover their Scottish lands by reaching a settlement with their enemies. 35 This settlement followed swiftly. It resulted in a new royal council with powers to last until Alexander reached his majority. In November, Henry issued letters recognising this council but in very different circumstances to his similar action in 1255. Now Henry and the English government were outsiders. The Scots had established the council without English involvement and merely sought Henry's acceptance of their actions. The form of this recognition makes clear that this was still a minority government. Though Alexander was seventeen, the need for formal regulation of his councillors makes no sense in terms of political factions, dealings with England or the king's own interests unless he had stifl to claim his full rights as an adult. It is not necessary to see the young king as being behind the end of political conflict and if Alexander had forced all parties to a settlement his action would have surely been referred to in dealings with England which still showed Henry to be concerned with his daughter's treatment, a theme of earlier complaints. Instead the council emerged from agreement amongst the Scottish political elite. The new council of ten included Durward, the Steward and the queen-mother alongside Menteith, Buchan, Mar and Bishop Gamelin. However compromise was limited. The three justiciarships and the offices of chancellor and chamberlain remained in the hands of the Comyns and their allies. The death of Walter Comyn, earl of Menteith, in mid-November removed the most active and abrasive member of this group. It improved prospects of smoother relations on the council but did not weaken his friends seriously.36 The dominant group on the council remained men who had been excluded from power in 1255. Their seizure of power, armed demonstrations on the border and alliance with Llywelyn were all directed against the English king. The support they enjoyed owed something to their success in winning wider support for claims that Henry's actions had infringed the liberties of the kingdom. Henry had sparked similarly hostile reactions in England, Wales and Ireland by the late 1250s. His Scottish enemies were one more group in open opposition to Henry's ambitious policies. However, during the two years from late 1258 it was clear that this opposition did not mean a fundamental alteration in the relationship between the two realms. Such a shift would threaten the overlapping interests which existed between them. Instead of a dispute over the running of Scotland as a separate political society, debates between the two realms from 1259 concerned issues similar to those of the 1240s. The Scots lords asked for the payment of Queen Margaret's dowry, the surrender of the document which had excluded many of them from government, for Henry's consent to Alexander's coronation and for his promise not to aid the king of Man. In response the English government prevaricated. A similar approach to Llywelyn provoked the prince into war in 1260, but by contrast relations between English and Scottish realms improved.3 7 This improvement centred on the personal relations between the two kings who both began 1260 excluded from full power. During the summer, plans were laid for

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a visit to the English court by Alexander and Margaret. This visit would prove to have major implications. Alexander probably insisted on it against the will of his councillors. It was these councillors who insisted on the series of conditions preventing the English from making demands on the king about the Scottish realm, changing his councillors or altering his status, perhaps declaring him to be of full age. Scots lords who had witnessed Henry's actions in 1251 and 1255 were reluctant to allow him a third chance to use his son-in-law. According to Matthew Paris, the Scots were also angered by the news that their queen was pregnant. In return for allowing Margaret to remain in England to give birth after he had returned north, Alexander received a promise from Henry that, should he die, his newborn heir would be handed to three or more lords from a list of thirteen bishops, earls and barons. It was the concerns of these magnates rather than Alexander which needed to be satisfied. This would prove to be the last occasion when the authority of a group of Scottish magnates was formally acknowledged by Alexander. Although the arrangement marked the Scots' preparation for a future minority, it was also the last act of the existing one. The chief importance of Alexander's visit to England was as the symbolic establishment of his authority. Henry used the occasion for a lavish display of his family connections designed to impress English and Scots alike. By contrast with Alexander's visits to England in 1251 and 1256, in 1260 the practical results of the meeting between the kings concerned the partial satisfaction of Alexander's demands and not an expression of Henry's informal superiority. Alexander returned to Scotland strengthened in money and prestige. He used this strength to exert his authority over his council. The king's intervention in a threecornered dispute over the earldom of Menteith was the first, indisputable evidence of the king enforcing his will over a powerful group of his magnates, including Buchan, Mar, Durward and two other earls. Interestingly, Henry too recovered authority in the aftermath of the Scottish king's visit. This was due to the collapse of the baronial council in late 1260, but the contrast between the failure of the council to deal with Llywelyn's fresh attacks and Henry's establishment of friendly relations with the Scots was obvious.38 Henry's anxiety to maintain this friendship was of major value to Alexander during the next six years. The latter's intervention in Menteith was accepted by most of his magnates, but the disappointed claimants looked for means to reverse his judgement. Walter Comyn's widow, Countess Isabella of Menteith, and her husband, the English knight, John Russell, sought Henry's aid. In September 1261 Henry confirmed documents stating Isabella's right to the earldom and allowed a papal nuncio to begin hearing the case in England after 1263. However, in contrast to his support of the Bissets, Henry gave no active support to the couple. Henry had no wish to precipitate a crisis with Scotland to add to his other troubles. His priorities are shown by his treatment of another rejected claimant. John Comyn was a much more powerful magnate than the countess. Instead of encouraging his Scottish grievances, Henry retained him as a source of valuable support in the English political crisis.39 These preoccupations also affected English activity in the sensitive maritime region around the north Irish Sea. English concerns with this area increased in the late 1250s. The crisis of 1258 in Britain coincided with an increasingly effective challenge to the dominance of English officials and magnates in the north of

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Ireland. In 1255 Brian O'Neill formed an alliance with Fedlimid and Aed O'Connor, the leading Gaelic lords in Connacht who were waging a largely successful war against the government and Walter de Burgh, lord of Connacht. In 1258 Aed O'Connor and other Irish lords recognised O'Neill as high-king. This alliance of Irish magnates coincided with the collapse of Henry's influence in the Isles and Scotland. The implications of this were demonstrated by the plundering attack of the Hebridean magnate, Dugald MacRuairi, on the English of Connacht. The marriage of Dugald's daughter to Aed O'Connor in 1259 represented an alliance with dangers for both English and Scottish governments. Most directly, the prospect of Irish lords being supported by heavily armed Hebrideans represented a direct threat to the colony in Connacht and Ulster.40 In these circumstances, the distant influence of Hakon of Norway was of limited value to the English government. The collapse of Henry III's Mediterranean plans reduced the wider value of the Norwegian alliance and in 1259, whilst protesting continued friendship, Henry informed Hakon that the proposed marriage alliance between their children would not occur. Instead the English recognised that concerns about the rapid political developments in the region were shared by the Scottish council. The Comyns, Alexander, earl of Buchan and John Comyn of Badenoch, Alexander Stewart and his brother Walter Bailloch, and the earls of Ross and Strathearn were all lords with interests and estates in the lands bordering the Isles and in a position to direct the council. They may well have resented the support of Henry III for lords in the Isles like Magnus of Man and Ewen of Lorn during the mid-1250s. By 1259 these Scottish 'marchers' may already have been exerting pressure on the Isles. It may have been under this pressure that Ewen submitted, recovering his Scottish lordships for a high rent, designed to ensure his allegiance. In May 1259 the Scots wrote to Henry III asking him not to assist Magnus, king of Man. While their aims probably did not include Man itself at this point, Magnus also held Lewis and Skye and the earl of Ross was looking covetously at these islands. The approach by the Scots must have warned Henry that their ambitions in the Isles did not coincide with his own. However, in 1259-1260 the English could not afford to be choosy. The earldom of Ulster was the target of a major attack by Brian O'Neill and the O'Connors. In late April 1260 English officials in Ireland were ordered to prevent Scots coming to Ir~land and forming alliances to the harm of the Scottish king. This was almost certainly directed against the Islesmen, recognised as a common danger by both English and Scottish governments. The success of their efforts was possibly indicated by the absence of Hebrideans amongst the list of leaders killed with O'Neill in his defeat by the English of Ulster at Down in June 1260. The victory, recorded by an Irish bard as won by the heavily armoured foreigners over the silk-clad Gaels, would have been much harder if O'Neill had been aided by his own foreigners from the Isles.4I The English government may have encouraged Scottish ambitions in the Isles at a decisive point. Attacks initiated by Scottish magnates from 1261 were to receive the enthusiastic endorsement of their young king as he assumed power. For Alexander, war in the Isles provided a bridge with the last goals of his father and with the interests of a powerful group amongst his earls and lords. While warfare in the Hebrides was left to these magnates, Alexander copied his father by seeking to buy out Hakon's claims in the Isles in 1261 and in 1263 coordinated the defence of

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his realm against the Norwegians in which the great lords of north and west, once again, took the chief active role. Significantly, when Alexander took the field in person it was in a different direction. In 1264 the king raised an army and fleet to sail to Man and force the submission of King Magnus to him. Alexander III's plans for Man had not been foreshadowed by previous royal ambitions on the island and Magnus's surrender at Dumfries had a greater significance in the British Isles than the submission of the Hebrideans in the same year. 4 2 Alexander's campaign had exploited the political weakness of England in 1264. The war between the Scottish and Norwegian kings was watched with impotent anxiety by Henry Ill. His efforts between 1262 and 1264 to negotiate between the parties were politely ignored. Compared with 1255 when Henry had possessed considerable influence with both kings, this failure graphically illustrated the decline of his reach in the northern British Isles. This decline was clearest with regard to Man. Alexander had imposed his lordship on an island which had been under Henry's protection since the 1230s. In other areas too the war in the Isles touched Henry's interests. The king and his son could only respond indirectly. Edward's creation of Walter de Burgh as earl of Ulster at the height of the war in July 1263 may have been, in part, an effort to build support in English politics. However, its timing and regional significance owed more to the need for a secure focus for lordship in the north of the colony, against the Irish, but also at a time of major instability in the neighbouring Isles, against possible attacks of Scots, Norwegians or fugitive Hebrideans. The creation was an admission that the English crown could not defend its regional interests. 43 This was underlined in 1265 when Magnus of Man died. Alexander took the island under his direct rule, an action which seems to show the Scottish king's lordship moving in the opposite direction to that of Henry in the region. Care is needed in drawing such a conclusion. The treaty of Perth in 1266 transferred the rights of the Norwegian crown in the Hebrides and Man to the kings of Scots in return for annual payments, and subjected the Islesmen to Scottish laws and customs. However, although the Manx dynasty was extinguished, Alexander largely accepted the rule of the other Hebridean dynasties. His dealings with these dynasties worked principally through western magnates like the Comyns, the Stewarts and the earls of Ross and Strathearn. The success of royal authority rested on the stability of aristocratic alliances and power structures in the region and was not much removed from English lordship in much of Connacht and Ulster. Just as English rule in north-west Ireland was vulnerable to shifts of political power and the failure of Marcher dynasties, so would Scottish authority in the Isles prove to be fragile after 1286. Direct rule was equally problematic. The Manxmen rebelled against Alexander in 1269 and 1275 and after 1286 would express a hostile view of Scottish rule. Alexander III's advances in the west proved no more secure than had Henry III's during the 1240s and 1250s. 44 Scottish activities in the Isles during the 1260s exploited English political crises without causing a direct clash. While Llywelyn ap Gruffudd renewed war against the English from late 1262, Alexander III's aims could be achieved whilst maintaining friendship with Henry. Unlike Llywelyn and his own father he did not have territorial ambitions which could only be won through military intervention in alliance with the enemies of the English crown. However, grievances did remain, over Queen

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Margaret's dowry and Henry's failure to return the 1255 document, which might have induced a king of Alexander II's temperament to exert diplomatic or military pressure on the rival parties. Alexander III made no such move. Throughout the period of sporadic civil war in England between 1263 and 1267, Alexander was identified by all parties as a natural ally of King Henry. It was only the capture of Henry and Edward by Simon de Montfort at Lewes in May 1264 that forced a direct role on Alexander. During the autumn and winter, he sent envoys to the English government seeking access to the captives reportedly arousing de Montfort's suspicions. By the spring of 1265, de Montfort was seeking to win over Alexander. In early March two letters were sent to him in Henry's name. The first commanded him to recognise the peace in England as Henry's vassal. The second was a personal appeal based on 'ties of blood and affinity', which it was hoped the queen would support in the interests of her family. These approaches may have had some success. By late May the king of Scots's envoys were en route to Henry and de Montfort at Worcester. They included Guy Balliol of Cavers, who was to die as de Montfort's standard-bearer at Evesham in August. His presence may indicate that Alexander was using his contacts with de Montfort and was ready to recognise the new regime. If so, his readiness ceased when Edward escaped from captivity and renewed the war in late May. According to a Scottish chronicle, Alexander had raised an army to aid Edward when the news arrived of de Montfort's defeat and death at Evesham on 4 August 1265. 45 The Scottish king was also involved in the final sparks of opposition to Henry and Edward. In January 1267 Edward came north to besiege the rebel, John de Vesci, in Alnwick Castle. De Vesci was Alexander's cousin and vassal, and Scottish landowners fought in both camps. Although lord of Tynedale, Alexander was not involved himself, but he did show his continued support for Edward when the latter visited him at either Roxburgh or Haddington after the capture of Alnwick. One of Edward's supporters, Gilbert de Umfraville, was enfeoffed with the earldom of Angus and Edward was allowed to raise a force of Scots and lead them against a new uprising in the Midlands. Though this force was probably composed of the cross-border lords who swore an oath to Edward at York, they went with the open consent of the Scottish king.46 The events of 1267 marked the last phase of the English political crisis. They also cemented the close family ties between Alexander and his English kin. This family mood prevailed the following year when Edward and his brother, Edmund, visited the Scottish king and queen and the royal couple travelled south with them to meet Henry at York 'for the sake of solace and recreation'. The meeting was clearly friendly and informal, but during it, a series of transactions involving Anglo-Scottish magnates were carried through. The family reunion was not divorced from the business of the two kings or their vassals. Alexander's friendship for his English kin did not remove areas of dispute. On the lingering issues of ecclesiastical taxation and on Queen Margaret's dowry, and in a fresh dispute about Alexander's rights in the lordship of Penrith, the Scottish king was no more ready to concede than his father would have been. However, larger issues seem to have been allowed to drop. Henry does not seem to have pressed obligations on Alexander like those he sought in 1244 or the 1250s. In tum, after he gained full authority in 1260-1261, Alexander did not renew the quest for his coronation. 47

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Peace and stability had been established during the 1260s against a background of family ties, personal visits and expressions of affection. This apparently genuine affection, stretching back to 1251, was perhaps the most important achievement of Henry III during Alexander's minority. However, the good relations between kings and kingdoms after 1260 were also due to English weakness. Despite long-term factors encouraging cooperation, amity was not automatic. In the 1230s and 1240s, a range of issues had caused tensions and, despite his reputation for goodwill, Henry did seek to demonstrate a material and symbolic superiority over the Scottish kings. The Scots' responses to these expressions of limited lordship were not uniformly hostile. Even Alexander II had recognised his obligations to Henry in 1244. while the settlement of 1255, giving the English king control over the duration of Alexander III's minority and composition of his council was accepted by a large group of Scots lords. For this group, Henry's promise that his role was temporary was sufficient protection in return for his political support and it was their favourable attitude to Henry which Fordun recorded. However, those excluded from the council claimed that Henry's intervention threatened Scottish liberties. The resistance of an aristocratic group, motivated by both private interests and more general hostility to external interference, was a combination which would re-emerge in opposition to efforts to establish direct English royal lordship in Scotland from the 1290s. Though the struggles of the 1250s never reached the scale of the wars after 1296, 1258 was a crucial year for Scotland. The prospect of an English army waging war with Scottish allies against the group of lords with custody of Alexander was very real. Though, as the summer showed, a political settlement was always possible, major conflict seemed likely in March and may have occurred but for the crisis in England. The interest and involvement of Scotland in the unfolding of this crisis from April 1258 emphasises the impossibility of separating the northern kingdom from the other political societies of the British Isles. This involvement went beyond the aid given by Alexander and some of his magnates to Henry. From a wider perspective, the terms of the Treaty of Perth in 1266 were a consequence of the English crisis like the Treaty of Montgomery the following year, by which Henry recognised Llywelyn as Prince ofWales and direct lord of the native Welsh princes. 48 Both treaties represented the contraction of Henry's lordship on the fringes of his varied and complex dominions in the British Isles. The Treaty of Montgomery was a much more direct loss of influence and, as Llywelyn remained Henry's vassal, concerned the internal character of royal lordship in Wales. However, the Treaty of Perth, and in particular the extension of Alexander's direct lordship over Man concerned the English king. At the earliest opportunity, in the late 1280s, Edward I would secure the island. His chosen agent, Richard, earl of Ulster, was the son of the magnate whose authority in north-east Ulster had been established during the crisis of the early 1260s in the region. It is possible that Edward regarded the Scottish lordship of Man and Llywelyn's principality as both being unpalatable results of the temporary collapse of his family's power in the 1260s. The treaties also emphasised differences in the positions of Alexander and Llywelyn which were central to Scotland's place in the British Isles. Unlike Llywelyn, Alexander was the heir to an established royal lordship with defined status and territory. During the early 1260s, the Scottish king had not needed to wage war against Henry or seek alliances with his enemies, and his gains from the

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crisis represented a much more limited shift in power. The relative position of the Scottish king and the Welsh prince by 1270 was shown by Henry III's promise to pay 2000 marks of Margaret's long-overdue dowry from the money owed by Llywelyn for his treaty. While Alexander emerged from the 1260s as the secure ruler of his realm and Henry's friend and kinsman, Llywelyn's more spectacular achievements had left a legacy of debt and mistrust which would cause fresh conflict within a decade.49 It is important not to see the relations between English and Scottish monarchies in isolation. They were part of the interplay between numerous communities and lords in the British Isles. The ability of the kings to direct events away from their heartlands varied greatly during these years and affected their dealings with each other. Neither were these dealings set in stable and fixed patterns between 1217 and 1290. Even a king with limited ambitions, like Henry III, could still be seen as a threat by some Scots and the dependence on personal factors was illustrated by the events which followed Alexander's death in 1286. While Edward I's approach to a new Scottish minority between 1286 and 1290 had similarities to the actions of his father in the 1250s, his demands for sovereign lordship over Scotland from 1291 went far beyond any earlier search for limited short-term influence. The reaction from Scottish elites to Edward's demands showed that, while the stability of Scottish kingship might depend on personal factors, the survival of the rights of crown and realm rested on a wider base of support. Notes

2

3

4

5 6

Johannes de Fordun, Chronica Gentis Scotorum, ed. W.F. Skene (Edinburgh, 18711872), i, 295-6. Recent works have begun to examine the place of the thirteenth century Scottish realm in the British Isles. See in particular K. Stringer, 'Scottish foundations: Thirteenthcentury perspectives' in eds A. Grant and K.J. Stringer, Uniting the Kingdom? The Making of British History (London and New York, 1995), 85-96. For the extent and importance of cross-border landholding see K.J. Stringer, Earl David of Huntingdon (Edinburgh, 1985), 177-211; ibid., 'Identities in thirteenth-century England: frontier society in the far north', in eds C. Bjorn, A. Grant and K.J. Stringer, Social and Political Identities in Western History (Copenhagen, 1994), 28-66; ibid., 'Periphery and core in thirteenth century Scotland: Alan son of Roland, lord of Galloway and constable of Scotland', in eds A. Grant and K.J. Stringer, Medieval Scotland, Crown, Lordship and Community (Edinburgh, 1993), 82-113. CDS, i, nos 761, 799, 808, 852, 856, 862, 890, 909, 1086; ed. A.O. Anderson, Scottish Annals from English Chroniclers (London, 1908), 335; Stringer, 'Periphery and core', 93-4; D.A. Carpenter, The Minority of Henry Ill (Berkeley, 1990), 245, 260, 343-58; R. Frame, Ireland and Britain, 1170-1450 (London, 1998), 158-60. As Alexander's heir-presumptive, his cousin, John the Scot, was Chester's ward and was married by the earl to a daughter of Llywelyn, Alexander may have had direct concerns about the dispute (A.O. Anderson, Early Sources of Scottish History, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1922), ii, 452, 462). CDS, i, nos 1113, 1181; CPL, i, 83; N. Vincent, Peter des Roches, an alien in English politics, 1205-1238 (Cambridge, 1996), 268-80, 301-2. CDS, i, nos 1181, 1335; Anderson, English Chroniclers, 343-5; Anderson, Early

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Sources, ii, 498-9; Vincent, Peter des Roches, 371, 417-18, 438-40. Between 1234 and 1237 Alexander was repeatedly pressed by the pope to obey his lord, Henry III (CPL, i, 142; ed. E.L.G. Stones, Anglo-Scottish Relations 1174-1328 (Oxford, 1965), 34-7; CDS, i, no. 1277). 7 Walter Bower, Scotichronicon, ed. D.E.R. Watt, 9 vols (Edinburgh, 1987-98), v, 17987; Anderson, English Chroniclers, 349-50; Anderson, Early Sources, ii, 536-9; A. Young, Robert the Bruce's Rivals: The Comyns, 1212-1314 (East Linton, 1997), 41-3; A. Young, 'The north and Anglo-Scottish relations in the thirteenth century', in eds J.C. Appleby and P. Dalton, Government, Religion and Society in Northern England 1000-1700 (Stroud, 1997), 77-89, 84-5. 8 Anderson, English Chroniclers, 350-1; Anderson, Early Sources, 536-9; CDS. i, nos. 1621, 1624, 1631. 9 Anderson, English Chroniclers, 351-8; CDS, i, nos. 1631, 1634, 1637, 1642, 1643, 1647-50, 1654; Foedera, i, 257; Scotichronicon, v, 184-5. Although Alexander reportedly received aid from his French in-laws, Henry had concluded a truce with Louis IX in 1243 and was not fighting on two fronts. 10 Anderson, Early Sources, 538. Dafydd ap Llywelyn, son of Llywelyn ap Iorwerth of Gwynedd renounced the peace with Henry in July 1244 and the English king led a major campaign in Wales the following summer. At least one Scottish source ascribed Henry's retreat to this cause (Johannes de Fordun, i, 291-2; BT, RBH, 238-9; F.M. Powicke, Henry Ill and the Lord Edward (Oxford, 1947), 632-4; J.B. Smith, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, Prince ofWales (Cardiff, 1998), 48-9). 11 For Galloway see A.A.M. Duncan, Scotland: The Making of the Kingdom (Edinburgh, 1975), 531-2; R. Frame, 'Henry III and Ireland: The shaping of a peripheral lordship' in Frame, Ireland and Britain, 31-58, especially 46-7; ibid., 'Ireland and the Barons Wars' in Frame, Ireland and Britain, 62; T. McNeill, Anglo-Norman Ulster (Edinburgh, 1980), 29; J.B. Smith, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, 62-8; H.W. Ridgeway, 'Foreign favourites and Henry III's problems of patronage, 1247-58', EHR 104 (1989), 590-610. 12 CDS, i, nos. 1640-1, 1865, 2671-2; CD!, i, nos 2732, 2752, 2754, 2755, 2925; Anderson, English Chroniclers, 355; Scotichronicon, v, 186-7. Alexander II reputedly disowned Alan to Henry III but he was pardoned by the latter when the Comyns and other Scottish enemies of the Bissets were established in power in 1251-1252. 13 Anderson, Early Sources, ii, 542, 546, 548-50, 553-9; CD!, i, nos 2269, 2327, 2381; K. Helle, 'Anglo-Scandinavian Relations in the reign of Hakon Hakonsson ( 12171263)' in Medieval Scandinavia 1 (1968), 101-14; A.O. Johnsen, 'The payments from the Hebrides and the Isle of Man to the crown of Norway', Scottish Historical Review 58 (1969), 18-34; A.A.M. Duncan and A.L. Brown, 'Argyll and the Western Isles in the Early Middle Ages', Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 90 (1956-7), 192-220, 207-10; R.A. McDonald, The Kingdom of the Isles: Scotland's Western Seaboard c.JJ00-1336 (East Linton, 1997), 98-102. 14 It was probably Alexander II who renewed the request for coronation which concerned Henry III in 1250-1251. He certainly encouraged the pope's canonisation of Queen Margaret which occurred in 1250 (CDS, i, no. 1798). 15 CDS, i, nos. 1812, 1816, 1818, 1847-8, 1852, 1857, 1865; Foedera, i, 179; Anderson, English Chroniclers, 363-8; Johannes de Fordun, i, 295-6; D.E.R. Watt, 'The Minority of Alexander III of Scotland', TRHS, 5th series, 21 (1971), 1-23, 9-10; K. Staniland, 'The nuptials of Alexander III of Scotland and Margaret Plantagenet', Nottingham Medieval Studies 30 (1986), 20-45. The value of such ill-defined displays of English royal prestige has recently been discussed with regard to Alexander III's attendance on Edward I in 1278 (R.R. Davies, The First English Empire: Power and Identities in the British Isles 1093-1343 (Oxford, 2000), 22-5.

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England and Europe in the Reign of Henry III

Anderson, Early Sources, ii, 580-5; Anderson, English Chroniclers, 370-3; Stones, Anglo-Scottish Relations, no. 10; CDS, i, nos. 1986-7, 1995, 2002-3, 2013, 2015, 2053; Foedera, i, 327; CR. 1254-56, 218; Duncan, Scotland, 565-7; Watt, 'Minority', 14-15. Foedera, i, 277, CR, I253-54, 70, 108; CDS, i, nos. 1984-85; J.R. Maddicott, Simon de Montfort (Cambridge, 1994), 106-24; Powicke, Henry Ill, 230-6; S. Lloyd, 'Henry III, the Crusade and the Mediterranean', eds, M. Jones and M. Vale, England and her Neighbours Essays in Honour of Pierre Chaplais (London, 1989), 97-119. From Bordeaux, Henry III sent his Gascon lieutenant and brother-in-law, Simon de Montfort, to Scotland in August 1254 with secret information about the king's anxiety. This may have been a further request for support or financial aid (Foedera. i, 306). B. Weiler, 'England and the Empire, 1216-1272: Anglo-German Relations during the reign of Henry III', unpublished PhD thesis, University of St Andrews (1999), 128-38; Maddicot, Simon de Montfort, 128-9; Foedera, i, 322, 336, 348-9; CDS, i, nos. 2040, 2065. B. Gelsinger, 'A thirteenth-century Castillian-Norwegiarr alliance', Medievalia et Humanistica, New Series 10 (1981), 55-80; CR, 1256-59, 276-7; Weiler, 'England and the Empire', 118. Anderson, Early Sources, ii, 567-9, 573, 576-8, 587; CD!, i, no. 3206; S. Duffy, 'The Bruce brothers and the Irish Sea world, 1306-29', Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies 21 (1991), 55-86, 63. The Chronicle of Man describes the defeat of Magnus and Ewen by the Manxmen in 1250, but says that in 1252 Magnus was 'received ... with joy' on Man. This does not suggest a successful conquest of the island but an arrangement which Magnus was quick to have confirmed by Henry and Hakon. CDS, i, nos. 2014, 2046; Foedera, i, 338; Chronicon de Lanercost, Bannatyne Club (Edinburgh, 1839), 60-1. Foedera, i, 336; Annala Connacht, The Annals ofConnacht, ed. A.M. Freeman (Dublin, 1996), 102-3, 108-9; J. Lydon, 'A land of war', ed. A. Cosgrove, A New History of Ireland, II, Medieval Ireland (Oxford, 1987), 240-74, 244. Johannes de Fordun, i, 295-7; Anderson, Early Sources, ii, 571, 580-4; Anderson, English Chroniclers, 372-4; Stones, Anglo-Scottish Relations, no. 10. CDS, i, nos. 1865, 2014; Anderson, English Chroniclers, 370, 372-4. John Balliol was only forgiven for his treatment of Queen Margaret and restored to Henry's favour in 1257 (CDS, i, no 2091). Maddicott, Simon de Montfort, 114; Weiler, 'England and the Empire', 134. CDS, i, no. 2046; Smith, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, 58-60, 64n; Frame, 'Henry III and Ireland', 49-54; Ridgeway, 'Foreign favourites'; M. Prestwich, Edward I (London, 1988), 10-15; C.W. Lewis, 'The Treaty of Woodstock: Its background and significance', Welsh History Review 2 (1964-5), 37-65. BT, RBH, 247-51; Smith, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, 84-101. For contemporary Gascon resistance to Henry's government see J.B. Smith, 'Adversaries of Edward 1: Gaston de Bearn and Llywelyn ap Gruffudd', eds C. Richmond and I. Harvey, Recognitions: Essays in Honour of Edmund Fryde (Aberystwyth, 1996), 55-88. Littere Wallie, ed. J.G. Edwards (Cardiff, 1940), no. 317; CDS, i, no. 2058; Foedera, i, 353, 362; Anderson, Early Sources, ii, 585-6, 588-9; Anderson, English Chroniclers, 376; Johannes de Fordun, i, 297-8. Gamelin was consecrated bishop of St Andrews against the will of the council in December 1255. He was then driven into exile and took his complaints to Pope Alexander who, in tum wrote to Henry III asking for redress (CDS, i, no. 2037; M. Ash, 'The Church in the Reign of Alexander III', ed. N. Reid, Scotland in the Reign of Alexander Ill (Edinburgh, 1990), 31-52, 38-9). It is, however, striking that John Balliol and Robert Ros, the two magnates with major

Royal Lordship in the British Isles, 1249-1272

30

31 32 33 34

35

36

37 38

39 40 41

65

lands in both realms who had incurred Hemy's hostility in 1255 did not join their former allies in challenging the English king and the Scottish council in 1256-57. Balliol was formally forgiven by Henry in August 1257 (CDS, i, no. 2092). Johannes de Fordun, i, 297-8; Scotichronicon, v, 318-21; Anderson, Early Sources, ii, 589-90; Littere Wallie, no. 317; CR, 1256-59, 290--1, 300--1. The dispatch of the Scottish embassy in March 1258 was not a result of a loss of power by Alexander's captors. One of the envoys was the abbot of Jedburgh who had pronounced excommunication against Durward and his allies in 1257 and the 'parliament' they asked Henry to send representatives to was to meet at Stirling, the burgh to which the Comyn party had taken Alexander in 1257. For alternative views of 1257-59 in Scotland see Watt, 'Minority', 17-19; Duncan, Scotland, 571-6; Young, The Comyns, 57-61. CR, 1256-59, 299-301, 302; CDS, i, nos. 2116-8; Anderson, Early Sources, ii, 591. Scottish chroniclers recorded Henry's retreat from Wales in 1257 as a defeat (Anderson, Early Sources, ii, 588). Littere Wallie, nos. 33, 37, 317; Foedera, i, 370, 371; CR, 1256-59, 294-5, 299, 31011; Smith, Uywelyn ap Gruffudd, 104-16. For this timetable and events in England see D.A. Carpenter, 'What happened in 1258?', eds J. Gillingham and J.C. Holt, War and Government in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of J.O. Prestwich (Woodbridge, 1984), 106-19. Liber Ecclesie de Scon, Bannatyne Club (Edinburgh, 1843), no. 108. The evidence from' May 1258 does not prove that Alexander was in control of his government. The envoys sent to England were Adam Malcarston, the provost of St Marys on the Rock at St Andrews, and Thomas Normanville, justiciar of Lothian before 1255 and amongst the group excluded from power by Henry, men whose sympathies were strongly with the Comyn party. For Malcarston see D.E.R. Watt, A Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Graduates to 1410 (Oxford, 1977), 371-3. Henry's attempts to ensure his daughter's good treatment also make more sense if she was still under the control of the group which had been accused of mistreating her in 1255. CR, 1256-59, 329; Anderson, Early Sources, ii, 592-3. The earl of Stratheam was at St Andrews in April, giving a vague response to a request from Henry III that the earl should protect Queen Margaret. The earl may have been more concerned with making peace with the queen's custodians (Foedera, i, 376). Stones, Anglo-Scottish Relations, no. 11; Foedera, i, 378; Anderson, Early Sources, ii, 593; Anderson, English Chroniclers, 376. For the continued dominance of the offices of Scottish government by the group which seized power in 1257 see Duncan, Scotland, 573-4; Young, The Comyns, 68-70. CR, 1256-59, 477; Smith, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, 120--31. CDS, i, nos. 2198, 2204, 2205; Foedera, i, 402; Anderson, English Chroniclers, 378-9; Vetera Monumenta Hibemorum et Scotorum Historiam lllustrantia, ed. A. Theiner (Rome, 1864), no. 237; Scotichronicon, v, 322-3. After reasserting his authority, Hemy also sought to improve relations with Llywelyn, though no final agreement was reached. Llywelyn's envoy to Henry was a Scot, Alan Irvine, who had negotiated the 1258 alliance. His employment may point to continuing contacts between the prince and the chief councillors of the Scottish king (Smith, Uywelyn ap Gruffudd, 134-5). W. Fraser (ed.), The Red Book of Menteith, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1880), ii, nos. 7, 8; Scotichronicon, v, 322-3; CDS, i, nos. 2284, 2285, 2287, 2291. Ann. Connacht, 112-13, 126-9; Duffy, 'The Bruce Brothers', 69; Frame, 'Henry III and Ireland', 51-2. CR, 1256-59, 476-7; The Acts of Parliament of Scotland, 12 vols (Edinburgh, 181475), i, 115 (henceforth cited as APS); CD/, ii, no. 661; Ann. Connacht, 130--3; Lydon, 'Land of War', 244-5. Henry's response to the Scottish request concerning the king of

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Man and his letter to Hakon were written on consecutive days in May 1259 suggesting a conscious shift in English policy. Though the document by which Ewen held his lands has been dated to 1255-56, the presence of Mar amongst his guarantors would have been unlikely shortly after the earl had been excluded from government by Henry III. The earl of Ross attacked Skye in 1262 and was lord of the island after 1266. 42 Anderson, Early Sources, ii, 602-42, 648-9; Scotichronicon, v, 346-7; McDonald, Kingdom of the Isles, 106-23; E.J. Cowan, 'Norwegian Sunset - Scottish Dawn: Hakon IV and Alexander III' in Reid, Alexander Ill, 103-31. 43 Foedera, i, 417; CR, 1261-64, 388; CDS, i, no. 2320. For the timing and possible motivation for Edward's grant to de Burgh see R. Frame, 'Ireland and the Barons' Wars', Frame, Britain and Ireland, 59-10,65-6. 44 Anderson, Early Sources, ii, 653, 672-3; Scotichronicon, v, 369; APS, i, 420; R. Lustig, 'The Treaty of Perth: a re-examination', Scottish Historical Review 58 (1979), 35-57; Foedera, i, 739. 45 CDS, i, nos. 2377-9, 2381; Anderson, Early Sources, ii, 649-52; Scotichronicon, v, 352-3. Alexander presumably gave his support to Robert Bruce, John Balliol and John Comyn who raised men from their Scottish estates to support Henry in 1264. 46 Lanercost Chron., 81; Scotichronicon, v, 354-5; CDS, i, nos. 2429, 2432, 2452; K.J. Stringer, 'Nobility and Identity in medieval Britain and Ireland: The De Vesey Family, c.ll24-l314', ed. B. Smith, Britain and Ireland 900-1300: Insular Responses to Medieval European Change (Cambridge, 1999), 199-239; Prestwich, Edward I, 57-8. 47 Scotichronicon, v, 370-1; CDS, i, nos. 2482-3, 2486, 2489-96, 2578-80; Foedera, i, 477; M. Ash, 'The Church', 44; P.C. Ferguson, Medieval Papal Representatives in Scotland: Legates, Nuncios and Judges-Delegate, 1125-1286 (Edinburgh, 1997), 10811. Other contacts between the royal families occurred at Christmas 1267 when Edmund, Henry's younger son, visited Margaret and Alexander at Berwick, while the Scottish king and queen came south to visit Henry at Christmas 1270 (CDS, i, no. 2542; Scotichronicon, v, 367). 48 For the Treaty of Montgomery and its background see Littere Wallie, no. 1; Smith, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, 139-86; R.R. Davies, The Age of Conquest: Wales 1063-1415 (Oxford, 1991), 312-16; A.D. Carr, Llywelyn ap Gruffydd (Cardiff, 1982). 49 CDS, i, no. 2580. Though, like Llywelyn, Alexander III had secured his new lands by promising an annual payment to the Norwegian king.

Chapter 4

England and the Albigensian Crusade Nicholas Vincent

'Once upon a time . . . in the land of the Albigensians, in the town called Carcassonne': so begins one of a collection of clerical anecdotes assembled in England early in the thirteenth century. I Another story in the same collection tells of Simon de Montfort, the hero of the Albigensian Crusade, and of his acquisition of a relic of St Narcissus whose heart was engraved with an image of Christ's Cross.2 De Montfort and the Albigensians, it would seem, had already become familiar themes of English story-telling, to be mythologised in the same way as those stock figures of the repertoire: greedy archdeacons, lustful chaplains and talking beasts. The English chroniclers, likewise, were to devote considerable attention to the causes and progress of the Albigensian Crusade: none more so than the St Albans historians, Roger of Wendover and Matthew Paris, drawing upon a rich stock of newsletters and eye-witness reports from the scene of battle. In the 1250s, however, revising his great chronicle for a shorter Historia Anglorum, Matthew Paris entered a caveat. 'Useful, but irrelevant to the history of the English', he has noted in the margin next to various entries on the Crusade. 3 Much this same judgement has since come to dominate historical opinion. The Albigensian Crusade, it is assumed, lay beyond the immediate concerns of England or the English. In the standard modem accounts of English crusading, it receives only the briefest of mentions.4 The English, so it is said, although prominent in the Holy Land crusades of the early thirteenth century, were indifferent to the progress of political crusades summoned to Languedoc or Italy.5 Thus has the story of the Albigensians been written out of English history. My purpose here is to challenge such assumptions, and in particular to suggest· that for a century or more after 1150, Toulouse and its religious and political difficulties excited keen interest across the English Channel. Admittedly, few Englishmen fought in the Albigensian Crusade. England, however, was not some island fortress, cut off from the European main. As is universally recognised, its Plantagenet kings and a large cross-section of its ruling class, baronial and clerical, retained strong European interests long after the debacle of 1204. By re-examining the English involvement in the crusade against Languedoc, I hope to add a new dimension to our picture of England's role in Europe and at the same time to suggest that this involvement was more important, both for England and for the heretics of the Albigeois, than historians may previously have allowed. Toulouse acquired its significance to the Plantagenets as a result of Henry II's marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine. Via Eleanor, Henry inherited a claim not only to the overlordship of Toulouse as Duke of Aquitaine, but to direct rule of the county

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itself, stolen from Eleanor's ancestors, so it was argued, by a cadet branch of the family of St Gilles.6 In 1159, Henry embarked upon a campaign of conquest, and although he was deterred from an assault upon the city by the intervention of King Louis VII of France, for many years thereafter Henry and his son Richard continued to exert pressure, bringing Cahors, Quercy and the Agenais under a degree of Plantagenet control, and in 1173 extracting an oath of fealty and a promise of future military service from Toulouse and its ruler, Count Raymond V. Toulouse was a natural target for the expansionist ambitions of the Plantagenet rulers of Aquitaine, leading to what William of Newburgh characterised, with only mild exaggeration, as a 'forty-years war' .7 The story of this war is a fairly familiar one, well told by Richard Benjamin. 8 For present purposes, we should begin by examining the role that this Plantagenet war may have played in the eventual summoning of the crusade against Toulouse: a role that, I would suggest, has received scant acknowledgement. Plantagenet chroniclers, almost to a man, report scathingly upon the spread of heresy within Languedoc and the county of Toulouse. Roger of Howden, Robert de Torigny, Walter Map and Gervase of Canterbury are just some of the twelfthcentury writers working within the Plantagenet court circle to refer to Toulouse and its heresies.9 Their reports suggest a mixture of fear and contempt, spurred on, no doubt, by the publicity afforded the heretics of Languedoc by their condemnation in the Lateran Council of 1179, and reflecting a much wider groundswell of clerical polemic against heresy, by no means restricted to the Plantagenet lands.JO Plantagenet writers, however, show a more than usually sophisticated knowledge of the Cathar heresy, sufficient, for example, to inform Roger of Howden that the heretics, whom he terms 'Arians', repudiated the sacraments of baptism and the Mass, and that they believed in two gods, the dualist principals of good and evil. 11 Peter of Blois, in the 1190s, composed an entire Tractatus de Fide to counter the teachings of publicani, paterini, humiliates, cruciati and other modern heretics against the sacraments of baptism and the Mass. Its closing section is devoted to a refutation of what may well be a Cathar challenge to the doctrine of the divinity of Christ. 12 A decade earlier, Walter Map is perhaps the first Western writer to refer to an association between the Cathars and the symbol of the cat, derived from the large black cat which Map claims descended on a rope at the Cathar sabbath: an embodiment of Satan, worshipped by the Cathars with obscene kisses and rituaJ.I3 No matter that such stories are pure myth, conjured out of Map's fantasy by way of the obscenities attributed to earlier religious dissidents. 14 The fact that the heretics of Toulouse were known to many Plantagenet writers, long before 1209, and that their beliefs were publicised as a threat to the orthodoxy of the Plantagenet lands in France, suggests that the rhetoric against heresy served as a rallying cry to those who already had a vested interest in pursuing the Plantagenet war against Toulouse. In much the same way, and at precisely the same time that the enemies of the Plantagenets in Wales or Ireland were being portrayed as subhuman barbarians, ripe for conquest, so the inhabitants of Languedoc were being demonised and dehumanised by the chroniclers of the Plantagenet court. 15 This attitude, and the ever more strident calls for outside intervention to which it gave rise, was to be exploited to the utmost by the kings of England and France, both of whom, for reasons of their own largely unrelated to heresy, had long sought

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to impose their authority upon Toulouse. According to Roger of Howden, as part of their wider discussion of crusading plans in 1178, Louis and Henry agreed upon a joint venture to exterminate the heretics. Although prevented from carrying this out, they both lent support to a preaching mission led by Peter cardinal-priest of S. Crisogono, accompanied by several bishops, including the Englishman John aux Bellesmains, bishop of Poitiers, and Bishop Reginald fitz Jocelin of Bath.l 6 It is to a meeting, at Fontevraud, that preceded this mission that we can date a charter of Henry II witnessed by Raymond of Toulouse and the viscount of Turenne, jointly appointed as the mission's lay protectors. 17 Quite independently, Gervase of Canterbury recites a letter sent by the count of Toulouse to the Cistercian general chapter in 1177, acknowledging the Cistercians' role in persuading him to seek the aid of the King of France against his heretical subjects, and offering to assist the King with all the powers at his disposal should Louis come in person to put the heretics to the sword. IS No matter that the count himself was not slow to exploit the rhetoric against heresy, as a weapon against his own, local rivals, the Trenceval viscounts of Albi and Carcassonne. 19 Already, by the 1170s, the call to put down heresy was being used to justify armed intervention in Toulouse by both the Plantagenet and the Capetian kings. To this extent, the territorial ambitions of the Plantagenets, and the call to extirpate heresy marched hand in hand. Since it was the Cistercians who at this time seem to have been the most vocal opponents of heresy, it is significant to note the apparently deliberate way in which, again from the 1170s, the Plantagenets began to assume a role as patrons of the Cistercians of Languedoc. Surviving charters of Eleanor and Richard, issued before 1189, and references to a charter of Henry II now lost, promise protection, quittance from tolls payable on traffic down the Garonne, and an annual levy of salt from Bordeaux to the Cistercians of Grandselve, Candeil and Belleperche. 20 By favouring these houses, all of them situated well beyond their south-eastern frontier, the Plantagenets could pose as the patrons of catholicism in a region notorious for its heresy, whilst at the same time advertising Plantagenet munificence deep within the county of Toulouse. In much this way, Henry II and his family had long employed religious patronage as a lever of influence within the Capetian lands, beyond the frontiers of Plantagenet Normandy or Anjou. 21 Similarly, in the 1170s we find the extension of the Plantagenet frontier southwards to Dax, Bayonne and the Pyrenees being advertised as an act of piety rather than aggression, intended to offer protection to pilgrims on the route to Compostela. 22 Permeable and shifting, transcended by religious patronage, the Plantagenet frontier was not some fixed line upon the map, but a fluid tide-mark that advanced or receded as land was newly conquered or lost. This in turn invites one highly significant question. If heresy flourished in Languedoc and Toulouse, what was there to prevent its spread into the Plantagenet lands to the north and west? The chroniclers cite the threat that heresy might spread as one of the chief reasons why it should be suppressed. William of Newburgh, for example, as early as the 1160s, reports the arrival of heretics in England, the first so he claims since the time of Pelagius. These heretics, the 'Publicani', spoke German, although they professed beliefs which Newburgh states originated in Gascony and which almost certainly show adherence to Cathar doctrine.23 Walter Map is even more specific. Writing in the early 1180s, he claims that heretics were not to be found in England, Brittany or

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Normandy, but that 'in Anjou there are many of them, and in Aquitaine and Burgundy they now abound to all infinitude' .24 Perhaps Map was thinking here of the followers of the heresiarch Henry of Lausanne, who in the 1130s and 1140s had preached his anti-clerical doctrines in Le Mans, Poitiers and Bordeaux before vanishing into the county of Toulouse. 25 None the less, several other English or Norman chroniclers refer to what is clearly Catharism as the heresy of Gascony, not merely ofToulouse.26 It was against the heretics in Wasconia, Albegesio et partibus Tolosanis that the Lateran decrees of 1179 had specifically been aimed, and in 1198, Pope Innocent III's very first letter to warn against the Cathars had been addressed not to Narbonne or Toulouse but to the Gascon archbishop of Auch, commanding the suppression in partibus Vasconie of that 'cancer' which otherwise threatened to spread to other lands.27 Allowing for a fair degree of ignorance here, and for a lack of precise terminology that would permit a distinction between the various regions of Aquitaine and the south, the chroniclers suggest that heresy was known in the lands under Plantagenet rule, not merely in those to the south or east. By contrast, most modern authorities agree that, with the exception of Quercy and the Agenais, heresy did not penetrate the Plantagenet lands, or more accurately that it gave rise to no widespread or reported persecution. Heresy, so it is said, never crossed the Garonne.28 Those reports that do exist, for example, of heresy in Perigord in the eleventh century, or of disturbances at St-Sever, in Gascony, after 1200, can be written off, in the one case as a literary exercise, modelled upon much earlier polemic unrelated to the Cathars, and in the other as mere anticlericalism, only later, and in error, assumed to exhibit Cathar overtones.29 The two modern authorities here, Yves Dossat and Bernard Guillemain, have between them advanced a number of explanations for the supposed failure of Catharism to penetrate Gascony: for example, that the Plantagenets and the local church authorities within the provinces of Auch or Bordeaux were more draconian than the counts of Toulouse in their suppression of heresy; that linguistic differences may have hindered Cathar preaching to the Gascons; ultimately, that something in the Gascon zeitgeist may have rendered the Plantagenet lands impervious to proselytization from beyond the Garonne.30 To these suggestions, various others might be added. For example, the ecclesiastical province of Bordeaux may have been not only better organised than that of Narbonne, but more open to alternative but none the less orthodox religious movements, such as those of Grandmont and Fontevraud, directly patronised by the Plantagenet rulers and serving to deflect what might otherwise have become heretical impulses into acceptable, catholic channels.3J The same might be said of the greater shrines or pilgrim routes of Plantagenet Gascony, from Blaye via Bordeaux and Bayonne to Compostela; from Poitou south to Dalon and Cadouin, both houses patronised by Henry II's family; or at Rocamadour in Quercy, at whose shrine of the Virgin, in 1170, Henry II himself sought healing from his personal and political misfortunes.32 Pilgrim shrines could prove a powerful disincentive to heresy, as had been shown to Peter of Bruis in the 1130s, successful heresiarch up to the time when he decided to preach at St Gilles, a town whose population had recently invested much of their surplus wealth in the building of a new catholic basilica. The men of St Gilles responded to Peter's call to burn all crosses by having Peter himself thrown on to the bonfire.33

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The question of the Plantagenet suppression of heresy must concern us again in due course. For the moment, however, I would suggest that, with the possible exception of harsh persecution, none of the explanations offered for the failure of heresy to spread from Languedoc is a wholly satisfactory one. We know so little, beyond Bordeaux, of the organisation of the catholic church in Gascony that it would be perilous to assume that the diocesan bishops of the provinces of Auch or Bordeaux were very different from their counterparts in the province of Narbonne. Most of the twelfth century bishops of the province of Auch are known, if at all, merely as names.3 4 Lay appropriation of tithes, believed to have acted as a spur to dissent in Languedoc, appears to have flourished just as vigorously west and south of the Garonne.35 Weak comital control, cited as the cause of so much trouble in Toulouse, seems to have been every bit as much a feature of Henry Il's rule in the south. Before 1200, we have only a tiny handful of Plantagenet charters for Gascony, far fewer than we have charters of the counts of St Gilles for Toulouse. What charters we have suggest that Plantagenet authority resided in the control of rivers, bridges and a few significant riparian settlements - Dax, Bayonne, Marmande, La Reale, St-Livrade and above all Bordeaux - granted liberties and privileges by the Plantagenets, but with no sign of any stable Plantagenet administration operating in the wildernesses of Les Landes or the regions further inland, which were left to their own clerical, comital or vicecomital dynasties, apparently little different from the heretic gentry ofToulouse.36 Even by the late thirteenth century, the Plantagenets controlled less than one in six of the castles of Gascony.37 As to language, it is unclear why the Gascon dialect should have defeated the Cathars, who had long maintained contacts across the Ligurian Alps and even the Adriatic, and who by the end of the thirteenth century were operating with apparent success in the regions of Foix and the Arriege, where every town and village seems to have possessed a dialect and an accent of its own.38 In the end, we are thrown back upon one highly significant conclusion. We know nothing of heresy in the Plantagenet south, because we have few records of its persecution. This is very different from an assumption that no heresy existed. When, in the 1230s and 1240s, the veil does occasionally lift, we find Plantagenet subjects, from Perigueux and Bordeaux, accused of heresy and subject to confiscation by royal officials.39 During the crusade itself, in 1219, the men of Plantagenet La Reole wrote to Henry III, complaining that they too were being accused of harbouring heretics, just as their neighbours at Marmande, at one time the recipients of a charter of liberties from the crusading King Richard, were being put to the sword for their supposed support of the Cathars.40 However, we have no inquisition records from the Plantagenet lands to tell us how widespread heresy had become there. Above all, we have no evidence of a crusade being directed against the king of England's heretical subjects. Heresy lies in the eye of the beholder just as much as in the mind of the individual heretic. Throughout the period of the Albigensian Crusade, there were powerful arguments to dissuade either the local Church authorities or the papacy from raising the charge of heresy against subjects of the catholic kings of England. The Plantagenets were orthodox, if occasionally wayward, sons of the Church. Even at the height of the papal polemic against King John, they were not to be cast out entirely from the bosom of Rome. To this extent, they and their lands were exempt from the charges levied, initially with Plantagenet

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support, against the luckless inhabitants of Toulouse. In much the same way, to the immediate east of Toulouse, in the imperial county of Provence, we find that the hue and cry against heresy was raised most ferociously at those times when the county's overlords, the Holy Roman emperors, were themselves openly at war with the papacy. Proven~al dissent, for the most part interpreted as localised anticlericalism, could at the height of the papal-imperial dispute give rise to a call for more drastic action against the Proven~al 'heretics'. 41 Thus far we have viewed the counts of Toulouse as hereditary enemies of the kings of England, and the accusations of heresy made against their subjects as being levied with active Plantagenet support. After the 1190s, all of this was to change. In 1194, the old count of Toulouse, Raymond V, was succeeded by his less warlike son, Raymond VI. Two years later, as part of a more general settling of past disputes, Raymond VI was married to Joan, the recently widowed sister of King Richard I of England. The counts of Toulouse, and in particular the heir to the county, Raymond VII, born to the marriage between Raymond VI and Joan, were henceforth to be viewed more as potential allies than as implacable enemies of the Plantagenets. 42 This sea-change in relations, first signalled by Joan's marriage, was rendered all the more permanent after 1204 by the drastic losses suffered by the Plantagenets in northern France, as a result of the Capetian conquest of Normandy and Anjou. With Plantagenet lordship in France restricted after 1204 to Gascony and the far south, relations with Toulouse assumed even greater significance. In the immediate term, Count Raymond may have exploited King John's predicament to throw off whatever residual authority the Plantagenets continued to exercise over Agen and the Agenais, theoretically assigned to Joan in 1196 to be held under English overlordship.43 To the Plantagenets, however, it was important to maintain relations with Toulouse, no longer as a target for conquests, but as a buffer and a potential ally against the expansionist ambitions of the Capetian kings of France. Ironically, this change in the Plantagenet approach to Toulouse occurred at precisely the time when the momentum for outside intervention against the Cathars, previously fuelled by Plantagenet rhetoric, reached its climax in the Albigensian Crusade. Had the crusade been summoned a decade earlier, then King John might well have proved one of its most ardent supporters. As it was, in the new atmosphere created by the Capetian conquest of Normandy, John found himself forced to perform a delicate balancing act. On the one hand he was now anxious to preserve Toulouse against the threat from the north. From the standpoint of Gascony, Count Raymond was likely to prove a far less troublesome neighbour than the French crusader Simon de Montfort, whilst the prospect that the crusade might spill over into the Plantagenet lands was hardly an appealing one. Montfort might continue to style himself earl of Leicester, adopting a title that he claimed from his mother and her ancestors, but his claims here were ultimately rejected by King John. John prized his kinship to Count Raymond above any claims that the self-styled earl of Leicester might advance. At the same time, the King could not afford to offer too public an alliance to Raymond without himself being branded a friend of the friend of heretics condemned by the Church. The impact of the events of 1204 upon the crusade extended beyond its effect upon Plantagenet relations with Count Raymond. Of the crusade's leaders, a significant number were former subjects of the Plantagenets or of the Plantagenet

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frontier, whose own circumstances had changed irrevocably in the aftermath of the Capetian conquest of Normandy and Anjou. Frontier lords, such as Simon de Montfort or William des Roches, previously in a position to play off the Capetians against the Plantagenets and so to seek favours from both opposing camps, now found themselves for the first time placed under the monolithic power of Capetian France. Starved of the prospect of territorial expansion in their native lands, such men may well have viewed the crusade as offering opportunities now denied to them nearer to home. In Normandy, for example, whose barons Lucien Musset has suggested the Capetians treated with considerable reserve after 1204, the crusade may have offered a welcome relief, attracting such men as Roger des Andelys, Roger des Essarts or Robert de Picquigny to try their martial skills in Languedoc. 44 The initial summons to the crusade in 1209 coincides with one of the most obscure periods in thirteenth-century English history: the period of the papal Interdict. Enrolment of the chancery records ceased or has been lost for the four years after 1208. As a result we know less than we might wish of the English reaction to the crusade. None the less it is clear that not all of King John's subjects stood aloof from the fight. William, archbishop of Bordeaux, and the bishops of Limoges, Cahors, Bazas and Agen all took part in the crusade's opening campaign, the archbishop, it seems, being particularly intransigent in his demand for the punishment of the heretics besieged at Casseneuil. In 1210, the archbishop was also at the siege ofTermes. In 1213, in company with the bishops ofBazas and Perigueux, he wrote to the Pope announcing the successful extirpation of heresy from much of the region, urging that the fight be carried through to its proper conclusion. 45 Amongst other early recruits was Martin Algeis, a mercenary captain who had served under King John in Normandy and who, through John's favour, had acquired the lordship of Biron and, from December 1202 until at least April 1205, high office as the Plantagenet seneschal for Gascony and Perigord. Martin's commitment to the crusade was less than wholehearted. Having been summoned by Simon de Montfort to the siege of Castelnaudary in 1211, in the following year he attempted to make his peace with Count Raymond. As a result he was besieged at Biron by de Montfort, dragged from the castle and hung as a traitor.46 With England at this time placed under papal interdict and King John under excommunication, it is hardly surprising that the English were excluded from the Pope's summons to crusade. None the less, at least two Englishmen did join the expedition. Both of them were exiles with a strong personal grudge against King John. The first, Hugh de Lacy, expelled from his Irish and English estates in 1210 as an early rebel against the King, appears to have served on the crusade as one of Simon de Montfort's most trusted advisers, participating in much of the fiercest fighting, and only returning to England in 1222, some years after de Montfort's death.47 The second, Walter of Langton, a Lincolnshire knight, was the brother, probably the elder brother, of Cardinal Stephen Langton whose exclusion from the see of Canterbury had first brought about the papal Interdict on England and the excommunication of King John. In 1211, Walter was briefly taken prisoner by knights of the count of Foix, and he was apparently still with the crusading army as late as 1218 when he witnessed a charter at Toulouse. 48 His participation in the crusade suggests that the venture had the support of Stephen Langton - hardly surprisingly given Stephen's well-advertised loathing of heresy. This is confirmed

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both by the opposition that the archbishop is said to have expressed late in 1213, when Count Raymond of Toulouse briefly sought refuge in England, and by an otherwise unremarkable charter issued by Stephen in the late 1220s, in which the list of his archiepiscopal household includes an exotic appearance by William, archdeacon of Narbonne. 49 Another of Langton's familiars, Master Alexander of Stainsby, probably a former pupil from Langton's days in Paris, appears to have been teaching in the schools of Toulouse shortly before 1215. Stainsby subsequently fled from the fighting, but it may be no coincidence that as bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, after 1224, he should be the only English bishop whose diocesan legislation displays any concern for the recruitment of crusaders against heresy. 5° Meanwhile, the King himself appears to have adopted a far from neutral stand towards Raymond and his southern allies. In 1211 he is said to have seized more than £20,000 from the English Cistercians on the pretext that their continental brethren were to blame for the misfortunes of his kinsman in Toulouse.5 1 In the same year, it is claimed he was instrumental in persuading the Poitevin baron Savaric de Mauleon to throw in his lot with Count Raymond. 52 Savaric, one of the most mercurial of the barons of thirteenth-century Poitou, composed a sirvante promising to support Toulouse with five hundred knights. 53 He undoubtedly joined Raymond in the siege of Castelnaudary, for which the local chroniclers either laud or excoriate him depending upon their own particular standpoint on the justice of the crusade. 54 The catholic bishops of Languedoc, in reporting to the Pope, were to describe Savaric as 'seneschal of that enemy of the Church, the King of England' .ss Thereafter, all did not go well for Savaric. Objecting that Count Raymond had failed to pay him his wages, and in the aftermath of Raymond's defeat at Castelnaudary, Savaric made off with the count's young son, Raymond VII, forcing Raymond VI to come to Bordeaux and to pay a ransom for the boy's release.56 Ironically, when Savaric was reconciled to King John, two years later, it is said to have been through the good offices of the archbishop of Bordeaux, one of the King's few councillors to have fought in person against the heretics. 57 Once the chancery enrolments resume, in 1212, we find the King entertaining a number of southern envoys, from Toulouse and Aragon, clearly as part of an attempt to launch a joint counter-offensive against both the crusaders and the King of France.ss Plans for this offensive were well advanced by the summer of 1213, with King John writing to Peter of Aragon and Count Raymond, expressing the hope that their alliance might prosper 'with the assent and by authority of the Pope' -either a naive or a mendacious suggestion this, despite the fact that between May and July 1213 John had made his own peace with Rome. In August 1213, Geoffrey de Neville and Philip de Aubigne were dispatched to serve as John's personal envoys to Toulouse, with the King promising that he and his expeditionary force would soon set sail. 59 John cited 'a great quantity of wind in England' as the cause of his delay. 60 In reality, the storm was more political than meteorological, since the King was finding it impossible to recruit an army. A summons to campaign in March had foundered upon the threat of a French invasion of England, and even though this threat was averted, when in July 1213 the King attempted once again to summon his barons, no army materialized.6 1 As a result, he remained in England. Toulouse and Aragon were left to fight alone, and in September 1213 suffered a crushing defeat by Simon de Montfort at the battle of Muret. Part of this failure

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must be attributed to the confusions and frustrations of John's attempted muster of March 1213, part to the long-standing tensions between the King and the English barons, which in the previous year had led to rumours of a baronial conspiracy against John. It is possible, none the less, that the nature and purpose of the summons of July 1213 had their own part to play. The English barons summoned in July 1213 were in effect to be used by John as allies of a suspected heretic, to fight not only against the French but against the crusaders of Languedoc. This in itself may have increased the barons' reluctance to serve. Certainly, the English chroniclers suggest that, whatever the King's sympathy towards Toulouse, general opinion in England was weighted heavily in favour of the crusaders. 62 Indeed, the crusade itself, and its leader Simon de Montfort, were to be used by the chroniclers to emphasise the moral and religious failings of King John. In 1211, for example, the Dunstable chronicler alleges that various of the English barons considered deposing the impious John and electing the ultra-orthodox de Montfort in his stead.63 Just as southern writers were to allege an alliance between Raymond of Toulouse and the Moslem rulers of Spain as a means of further blackening Raymond's reputation, so in England, Matthew Paris was to claim that King John had not only opened negotiations with Islam, but proposed to apostatise from Christianity and to render homage for his realm to the emir of Morocco.64 As it stands, the story is pure nonsense: a black satire upon the homage for England and Ireland which John did indeed render in 1213, not to Islam, but to the Church of Rome. However, as a mark of the opprobrium that attached to any negotiations between John and the heretic or infidel powers on his southern frontier, the story points up the dangers to John of allying himself with Toulouse and its reputedly heretic count. Muret, as much as the later battle of Bouvines, was to have fateful consequences for the Plantagenets. Had John brought assistance to his allies in 1213, the later history of Plantagenet lordship in France might have taken a very different course. As it was, when he did eventually set sail in 1214, it was without the prospect of support from the south for his own endeavours and those of his northern allies, in Poitou and Flanders. Here again, the Albigensian Crusade can be shown to have played a not insignificant role in Plantagenet history. In the meantime, following his own defeat and the death of Peter of Aragon at Muret, Raymond VI of Toulouse. sought refuge in England. He is said to have arrived there shortly before Christmas, and left early in February 1214, forced out, so the chroniclers allege, by the hostility of Archbishop Langton and the papal legate, Nicholas of Tusculum.65 The King, though, had by no means abandoned Toulouse. Commanded by the Pope to restore the English lands of Simon de Montfort, who since 1207 had been denied the inheritance of his mother, heiress to the English earldom of Leicester, the King refused.66 Count Raymond is said to have returned to France in 1214 with considerable quantities of English silver and a large contingent of knights.67 According to Coggeshall, in England the count renewed his homage to John for Toulouse, accepting 10,000 marks in return.68 If so, then on the eve of his own sailing for Aquitaine, King John had become even further embroiled in the affairs of Languedoc, effectively recreating the situation of the 1170s when homage for Toulouse had been rendered to the Plantagenets rather than directly to the kings of France.

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The southern chronicler, Peter de Vaux-de-Cernay, reports that in 1214 de Montfort anticipated open warfare with King John.69 In April 1214 the King travelled south to the Garonne. At La Reale, by this time the easternmost town on the river under full Plantagenet control, he issued letters of protection for various of his Gascon subjectsJO In the meantime, he dispatched Geoffrey de Neville eastwards to Marmande. Neville's standard was hoisted over the town's ramparts, but when attacked by de Montfort and the crusaders, Neville negotiated a withdrawal, allowing his serjeants to leave in peace, whilst various ofthe town's burgesses fled for safety to La Reole.7I The most prominent agent of peace in 1214 was the papal legate, Robert Courson, sent to France both to supervise the war against Toulouse, and to recruit knights for what the Pope now regarded as the far more pressing needs of the crusade to the Holy Land. Whilst continuing to preach the Crusade against heresy, the legate, acting on papal instruction, henceforth limited the indulgences available in Languedoc from a plenary, crusading indulgence to a promise of a mere 60 days' remission of enjoined penance for every day that a warrior fought against the Cathars.n Courson was well placed to serve as go-between with King John, being himself an Englishman, albeit an Englishman who had spent much of his career in the schools of Paris, in the same clerical and intellectual milieu as Stephen Langton. 73 As for the King, once again John was forced to tread a delicate line. Early in the summer of 1214, Courson wrote to him in friendly terms, requesting his attendance at a council to be held in Bordeaux around 25 June.7 4 Although John did not answer this summons in person, he did send representatives, the bishop of Perigueux and Geoffrey de Neville, assuring the legate of his intention to remain obedient to the Pope and of his willingness to stand by papal and ecclesiastical commands in respect to all his castles and towns in the regions of Agen and Cahors - the border lands that divided Plantagenet Aquitaine from Toulouse. 75 As a result, in the statutes Courson promulgated at the council of Bordeaux, King John and his subjects were specifically exempted from a series of measures, including tighter controls upon Jewish usury on crusaders' debts and a strict prohibition upon lay exploitation of tithes, which otherwise threatened excommunication and the dissolution of all homage to lords who refused their implementation.76 A previously unpublished letter from Courson to the pope, sheds new light upon these negotiations. 77 At Bordeaux, Courson reports, the King's representatives not only promised obedience, but that the King was prepared to place his feoffs around Agen, Cahors and Toulouse under the direct protection of the Pope and the legate, lending whatever assistance might be required from the local Plantagenet administration to expel the heretics and to bring them before the legate for judgement. This is a remarkable offer, albeit one prefigured by the homage which John had already rendered to the papacy for his lands in England and Ireland. The legate then reports the aftermath of the council. In July 1214, John's northern allies suffered defeat by the French at Bouvines, whilst John himself was abandoned by the most powerful of the Poitevins. His campaign in Poitou, and indeed the entire fate of the English crown were thrown into jeopardy. More than ever it was important for the King to safeguard his relations with the papacy. A week after Bouvines, on 2 or 3 August, almost certainly after the news of the battle had reached him, John met with Courson at Limoges. According to Courson's report, he came unattended by

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his military following and despite his very pressing concerns.7 8 At their meeting, John reiterated his earlier offer, first made at Bordeaux and since repeated in royal letters delivered to the legate in council at Clermont-Dessous, begging the legate to do nothing to his prejudice.79 As a result, the legate reported favourably on the King's intentions to the Pope. In Languedoc meanwhile, the legate had granted official recognition to Simon de Montfort's claim to all lands conquered from the heretics.so In August, the King ordered the men of La Reole to reimburse the archbishop of Bordeaux 1000 livres paid to de Montfort, perhaps to purchase immunity from attack, or alternatively in part settlement of de Montfort's claims to his wife's inheritance in England.8 1 In either case, the payment helps substantiate de Montfort's boast, reported in the south, that even the King of England was now prepared to buy his cooperation.82 Shortly afterwards, John appealed to Courson to assist in negotiating an Anglo-French truce, effectively putting an end to his own plans for military reconquest in Poitou.83 In November 1214, by now returned to England, he re-emphasised his determination to extirpate heresy, writing to both the seneschal of Gascony and to Courson's fellow legate, Peter of Benevento, urging them to seek out and to destroy the heretics. 84 Two inferences can be drawn from all this. First, we have the King's apparently genuine commitment to the eradication of heresy. This should serve as a reminder that in matters of religion John himself, whatever his enemies might claim, was neither a sceptic nor a heretic. Since at least the time of the Oxford 'publicani' in the 1160s, the punishment of heresy and the pursuit of its supporters had been treated as royal prerogatives by the Plantagenets, requiring supervision by the King's sheriffs.85 Even at the height of the papal Interdict upon England, we have reports of heretics, described as 'Albigensians', being detected in England, perhaps amongst the foreign merchant community of London. These individuals were sentenced to death by burning, almost certainly with the King's approval or at direct royal command.86 In 1214, the King was prepared to admit the jurisdiction of the papal legate over the heretics of Agen, Cahors and Toulouse, lending whatever support was necessary for their extermination. This in turn carries us on to a second point. In 1214, the King was determined to preserve his relations with the papacy, even to the extent of surrendering part of his French dominion into temporary papal custody. King John exercised no day-to-day authority over Agen, Cahors, or Toulouse, whatever new deal may have been struck with Count Raymond in 1214. By offering free reign to the papal legate, Johnjeopardised none of his real authority in Aquitaine. None the less, with an offer such as this on the table, it becomes easier to understand why Simon de Montfort and the crusaders were deterred from extending their operations into those parts of Aquitaine and Gascony now guaranteed virtual immunity by their status as royal and papal protectorates. This should not, however, be read as evidence of a breach between John and the counts of Toulouse. John wished to maintain good relations with both Rome and Toulouse. Even though Count Raymond VI had been forced out of England in 1214, his son, Raymond VII, John's nephew, was sent there later that year to take counsel with the King. In 1215, it was from England that Raymond VII travelled to the Lateran Council, disguised as the servant of a merchant from A gen. 87 In Rome, his cause was pleaded most eloquently by two English churchmen, the abbot of John's Cistercian foundation at Beaulieu, and the archbishop of 'Obezin'- generally

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identified as the archbishop ofYork, but perhaps more likely the royalist archbishop of Dublin, Henry of London. Urging the Pope to clemency, abbot and archbishop asked that, whatever the sentence passed upon Raymond VI, Raymond VII be allowed to inherit the lands of his mother, Joan of England, probably to be identified as Joan's dower lands east of Toulouse rather than as her marriage portion in the Agenais. 88 Even as the Council was meeting, King John's ability to influence events was being swept away by the chaos that engulfed England in 1215: the baronial rebellion, the French invasion and the King's own death, leading to the accession of his infant son, Henry III. When the smoke eventually cleared, with the French withdrawal and the establishment of Henry III's minority council after 1217, it might be assumed that English involvement in the Albigensian Crusade would be consigned to memory. The English barons who, failing in their rebellion, sought penance and consolation overseas, pledged themselves after 1217 to the Fifth Crusade to Damietta, rather than to the bloodshed still taking place in Languedoc. None the less, events in England were still to exert a major influence over the fate of Toulouse. Stories of heroic deeds on the Albigensian Crusade were used as part of the preaching mission to recruit English crusaders for the attack upon Damietta.89 Much more significantly, the expulsion from England of the heir to the French throne, the future Louis VIII, was to have momentous consequences for the Albigensian Crusade. As penance for his invasion of England, Louis had been sentenced in September 1217 to the payment of a tenth, and his followers to the payment of a twentieth of their revenues to the cause of the Holy Land for the next two years. In September 1218, following the death of Simon de Montfort, crushed by a missile whilst besieging Toulouse, it was agreed that this money, together with a moiety of another crusading tax imposed upon the French Church, might be redirected towards the war in Languedoc. 90 In 1219, Louis led a French army south to Toulouse: an intervention largely financed by the settlement imposed as a result of his invasion of England. The irony of this did not pass unnoticed, either in England or in Rome. In England, where contacts with Count Raymond had by now resumed, the council of Henry III expressed its fears that Louis intended to transform the crusade into a Capetian war of conquest, threatening not only Toulouse but the Plantagenet lands in Gascony. 9 1 In the summer of 1219, English lobbying in Rome resulted in the dispatch of papal letters to the legate Bertrand at Toulouse. How scandalous it would be, the Pope complained, if money diverted from the Holy Land were to be used for the disinheritance of the Christian King Henry III, who himself was vowed to the recovery of the Holy Land and who had only recently been saved from his own enemies through the labours of the Holy See. Louis must be prevented from making any attack upon Plantagenet Gascony or Poitou. If the presence of heretics there should force intervention, any land taken from them must pass to Henry III, not to Louis.92 Gascony itself was by this time in the charge of the king's seneschal, Geoffrey de Neville, who in November 1218 renewed the privileges of the Cistercians of Grandselve first awarded in the 1170s, and who, at least in theory, appears to have been expected to exercise some sort of authority over Cahors and the Agenais.93 In 1219, Neville reported attacks made by Louis's army upon Elias Ridel, lord of Bergerac, described as guardian of the King's lands towards Agen and Perigueux. 94

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Meanwhile, by far our most detailed report comes in letters from the commune of La Reole, directed to Henry III and to the leading members of his council. As part of an appeal for the renewal of their trading privileges at Bordeaux, in the autumn of 1219 the men reported the dispatch of knights from Bordeaux, sent to inspect the state of La Reole's defences. Louis and Aimery de Montfort's men, they declared, were seeking any excuse to attack the King's lands. When Louis sacked Marmande (in June 1219), Geoffrey de Neville and the archbishop of Auch were staying at La Reole, and offered counsel by which the town had escaped the 'snares' (minas) of the crusaders. Although faithful subjects of the King of England, the men of La Reole sent ships and sailors to assist the crusaders' passage of the Garonne to Marmande, Aguillon, Moissac and Toulouse. Had they not done this, Louis threatened to attack La Reole itself, urged on by a local monk who accused the townsmen of harbouring heretics. The archbishop of Auch, the abbot of Blasimont and the bishop of Lectoure all proved themselves loyal to the Plantagenet cause, the bishop in particular angered by intrusions upon his lordship made by Aimery de Montfort and the papal legate under cover of their pursuit of the viscount of Lomagne, a supporter of Count Raymond. Henry III, so the letters urged, must none the less send money to help pay for La Reole's defence. The bishop of Lectoure, who proposed to visit England, and William de Moncada, lord of Bearn, recently reconciled to the Church, should both be recruited to the Plantagenet cause. 95 Independently, the Chanson de La Croisade Albigeoise informs us that Archbishop Garcias of Auch was present at the siege ofMarmande in June 1219. Together with the bishop of Saintes, Garcias is said to have counselled Louis to spare the life of the count of Astarac who had surrendered Marmande to the crusaders, prior to the massacre of the town's inhabitants.96 Marmande apart, Louis's expedition of 1219 achieved no major breakthrough, and with the French withdrawal, Raymond VII rapidly recovered much of the territory lost to the crusaders over the previous decade. Untainted by the heretical leanings of his father, closely related to King Henry III, and a staunch opponent of the Capetians, Raymond VII for the first time began to attract admiring notices from the English chroniclers.97 Coggeshall, for example, describes the young Raymond as able and orthodox, unlike his father.98 Several English chroniclers report upon developments within the Cathar community, drawing their information from letters dispatched by the papal legate Conrad in 1223, describing the heretics' continued contacts with the dualist church of the Balkans and the negotiations between the Cathar bishops Bartholomew of Carcassone and Vigouroux de Ia Bacone over the establishment of a new Cathar see, almost certainly to be identified as Pujols near Villeneuve-sur-Lot in the Agenais. 99 But when in 1225 the new papal legate Romanus revived calls for a crusade in the Languedoc, both the Dunstable annalist and Roger of Wendover voiced disquiet. 'Whether through a spirit of cupidity or piety', the Dunstable chronicle remarks, Louis VIII purchased Aimery de Montfort's claim to Toulouse and launched his campaign against Avignon.I 00 Wendover states that 'more crusaders were recruited through fear or the King of France or by favour of the legate than through a zeal for right'. 101 Certainly, whereas at least some Englishmen are reported as fighting in Louis' earlier campaign of 1219, there seems to have been little or no English recruitment to the campaign of 1226. Those former Plantagenet subjects who joined the 1226 crusade, including

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Savaric de Mauleon and perhaps the Anglo-Angevin baron Pain de Sourches, fall into the category of Frenchmen wavering between the Plantagenet and Capetian camps. 102 Wendover reports, somewhat gleefully, that Louis' death, brought on by the pestilence that afflicted the army at Avignon, had been predicted by Henry III's counsellor, the astronomer Master William de Pierrepont, much as in 1218 the death of Simon de Montfort is said to have been foretold by another English geomancer then living at Toulouse.J03 Henry III and his council had maintained sporadic contacts with Toulouse throughout the early 1220s.I04 At the news of Louis's proposed crusade, Henry is said to have been on the verge of an expedition of his own, to support the endeavours of his brother, Richard of Cornwall, who since 1224 had been in Poitou and Gascony, attempting to restore Plantagenet authority in the aftermath of the Capetian seizure of La Rochelle.l05 Prohibited from taking up arms against the crusader King Louis, in the summer of 1226 Henry none the less entered into a formal 'convention' with Raymond of Toulouse, the terms of which have unfortunately been lost.I06 Possibly, it concerned Plantagenet claims over the Agenais. In May 1226, the men of Agen had formally allied themselves with Raymond, against the French crusaders, whilst Richard of Cornwall, recently established as count of Poitou, appears to have been content to recognise the Agenais as belonging to the mouvance of Toulouse.l07 Following Louis's death, Richard and Raymond are themselves said to have entered into a close alliance. 108 In December 1226, the men of the city of Toulouse wrote to England promising support and requesting financial subsidies to combat the mutual enemies of Raymond and Henry III. 109 Subsidies of at least 800 marks were paid to Raymond in the following year, and negotiations with England were still proceeding as late as March 1229, when the King sent envoys to Raymond with proposals 'for the reduction of our grievance and your tribulation', urging Raymond 'so to pass through worldly things that you do not forfeit those which are eternal' .110 The reason for this warning is clear: Raymond was on the verge of making his peace with Louis IX. Under the terms of the Treaty of Paris, sealed in April 1229 following negotiations that had been under way since November 1228, Raymond agreed to recognise the Capetians as his heirs to the county of Toulouse.lll This treaty, which was ultimately to bring the whole of Languedoc under Capetian rule, came as a major rebuff to Henry III. Since 1226, Henry's attempts to establish military alliances in Poitou and Brittany had met with equal lack of success. In 1229, proposals for a Plantagenet expedition to France collapsed in the face of inadequate supply and the indifference of Henry's councillors.ll2 From Raymond's standpoint, however, the treaty with Louis IX not only averted the threat of a further French crusade against Toulouse, but guaranteed him life possession of a large part of his ancestral inheritance. Still a young man, and as yet without a son to succeed him, Raymond could afford to undergo personal humiliation and to make promises to Louis in the short term, in the hope of better things to come.m Who could tell in 1229 what effect the birth of a son, or developments within the Capetian realm might have upon the future disposition of Toulouse? The treaty of 1229 did not end England's involvement in the affairs of Toulouse. It did, however, result in a distinct cooling of relations. For several years thereafter, we have no evidence that diplomatic contacts were maintained with Count Raymond.

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Although Plantagenet claims to the Agenais had effectively been written out of the 1229 treaty, in 1237 we find Henry III ordering his local representatives in Gascony to enforce an ecclesiastical judgement passed against the count of Toulouse and his seneschal for the Agenais, William Arnaud de Tontoulon, the church authorities threatening count and seneschal with excommunication and the dissolution of whatever homage was owed to them should they fail to comply. As lord of Le Castet-de-Tontoulon near Bazas, William Arnaud was a subject of Plantagenet Gascony, although the dispute itself concerned Le Mas-d' Agenais on the Garonne, north of Agen. 11 4 It may be no coincidence that it was in the immediate aftermath of his breach with Raymond in 1229, that Henry III at last permitted Simon de Montfort, son of the hero of the crusade, to sue for his inheritance in England, including the earldom of Leicester previously denied by King John to the elder Simon. 11 5 Furthermore, in July 1236, the king wrote to the Pope and cardinals, recommending Simon to them as the obedient son of a father 'who did not fear to suffer death in the cause of the Crucified', asking the Pope to heed Simon's unspecified petition.II6 There is no sure evidence that this 'petition' concerned Toulouse, to which the principal claim had passed after 1218 not to Simon but to his elder brother Aimery de Montfort. None the less, that the crusade against Toulouse was presently on the King's mind is suggested by papal letters of 26 September 1236, empowering the archbishop of Canterbury to impose penance and pronounce absolution for the King's role in assisting Count Raymond with money: a role, presumably taking us back to the period before 1229, for which the King feared that he might have incurred the sentence of excommunication passed against all who had aided the heretics and their excommunicate count. 11 7 The timing here suggests that the petition carried by Simon to the Pope in the summer of 1236, and Henry III's request for penance for his role in the crusade may well have been delivered during the same embassy to Rome. By supporting a bid by the younger Simon de Montfort for power in the south, Henry might have hoped to avert the by now much more serious prospect of a Capetian annexation of Toulouse. However, there may have been more at stake in 1236 than just Plantagenet-Capetian rivalry. At the time of his petition on behalf of de Montfort, the King himself may have been moving towards a more personal engagement with the attack upon heresy. Shortly before his petition for de Montfort was dispatched to Rome, Henry had intervened to support attempts to root out heretics in his own realm of England. Although allowing that the prior of the Dominicans had no authority to arrest or imprison those found to answer incorrectly over articles of faith, in letters of 9 June 1236, the King commanded the sheriff of York to arrest 'the many infidels and those who might be convicted of the sin of heresy' at the prior's command, and to imprison them pending judgement. IIS For a brief moment, it appears, the King lent support to the introduction of inquisitorial processes to England, to be carried out, as in the heretic-infested regions of the south, under the supervision of the Dominican friars . It is from precisely this time that we have our only certain proof that the King was enforcing confiscation against suspected heretics in the south. In June 1236, the King ordered the seizure of 19 tuns of wine belonging to Arnald of Perigueux, a merchant and one-time farmer of the city of Bordeaux, suspected of heresy. The wine was impounded from amongst the goods of a fellow merchant trading at

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Southampton, and was restored before 1238 when Arnald was once again active in the wine trade to England. 119 In the same way, the accusations of heresy made in 1241 against another southern merchant, Stephen Pelicer of Agen, were withdrawn following the receipt of letters from the bishop and the Franciscans of Agen, Stephen being allowed to recover more than £60 of merchandise and wine seized at Bristol. 120 None the less, the King's interventions here suggest both a continued vigilance against the threat of heresy, particularly of heresy that might spread to England, and close cooperation with the local church authorities in Gascony. Gascony itself, it would seem, although spared from the greater excesses of the inquisition, was immune neither to heresy nor to the rumours and confiscations that heresy brought in its wake. Ironically, the re-establishment of relations between England and Toulouse after 1236 was to some extent facilitated by the ties that bound both Henry III and Count Raymond to a man judged by many to be the greatest heretic in Christendom: the Emperor Frederick II. It was to Frederick that Count Raymond looked in the 1230s for favours east of the Rhone. England's entanglement with the Emperor, encouraged after 1231 by the regime led by Bishop Peter des Roches, was brought to a climax in 1235 with the marriage of Frederick to Henry III's sister Isabella.l2l Both Count Raymond and Bishop des Roches joined the emperor in 1235, during the siege of Viterbo, and in the same year we have the first signs of a rapprochement between Raymond and the English court, with messages being exchanged via the Gascon bishop of Bazas. 122 The situation here was greatly complicated by the fact that both Henry III and Raymond had designs upon the county of Provence: Henry by virtue of his marriage, in 1236, to Eleanor of Provence; Raymond because of his desire to consolidate his hold upon the Venaissin and the territories east of the Rhone awarded him by the Emperor. When, in 1240, at the prompting of Frederick II, Raymond declared open warfare upon the count of Provence, Henry III is said to have written to the Emperor, urging him to call off the attack.l23 Marital politics were to play an important role, too, in the events that unfolded after 1240, bringing England and Toulouse once again into military alliance against the French. The outbreak of the Anglo-French war of 1241-1242 was itself an extremely complicated affair, provoked by the rebellion of Henry III's mother and stepfather, Isabella and Hugh de Lusignan, which itself was brought on by the attempts made by Louis IX in the summer of 1241 to secure oaths of allegiance to his brother Alfonse, newly created count of Poitou.l24 In October 1241, the houses of Lusignan and Toulouse agreed an anti-French alliance, to be cemented by a marriage between Count Raymond and Hugh and Isabella's daughter Margaret de Lusignan, Henry III's half-sister. 125 The marriage itself proved impossible to effect, in part because Raymond and Margaret were closely related by blood; in part because Raymond was already engaged to be married to Sanchia, the younger daughter of the count of Provence, sister-in-law of both Henry III and Louis IX, and finally because there were unresolved doubts over the validity of Raymond's divorce from his previous wife. 126 In the meantime, however, the alliance of Raymond and the Lusignans helped to draw together a much wider anti-French coalition, including Henry III of England, the King of Aragon and, to some extent, Emperor Frederick II. Henry crossed to France, where he was promptly humiliated by the French and abandoned by the Lusignans. Retiring to Bordeaux, Henry and Raymond entered into a formal treaty, undertaking

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that neither would make peace with the French without the other's consent. 127 Raymond, however, had other concerns than just the needs of his English ally. Earlier in the summer he had been placed under excommunication for his role in the murder of the papal inquisitors appointed to root out heresy. Threatened with ecclesiastical censure, a French invasion and betrayal by various of his southern allies, Raymond prepared to abandon Henry III to seek peace with King Louis. 128 Meanwhile, Raymond's marriage proposals had introduced yet a further complication to his relations with England. On 30 June 1242, and still in league with the Lusignans, Henry III had promised to lend his support to the proposed marriage between Raymond and Margaret de Lusignan. 129 This in turn freed Sanchia of Provence, who in July was formally betrothed to King Henry's brother, Richard of Cornwali.130 However, the defection of the Lusignans to the French, Richard's betrothal to Sanchia, and Raymond's excommunication together conspired to rob Raymond of both of the brides he had courted just a year before. 13 1 Even as Henry was writing to Emperor Frederick II to announce his new treaty with Toulouse, Raymond was preparing to enter into negotiations with Louis IX, solemnised in January 1243. 132 An embassy due to set out from Bordeaux to Toulouse in December was held back by the news of Raymond's defection, and on 8 January 1243 Henry was placed in the humiliating position of having to inform the emperor of this volte face. 133 So outraged by these events was the English chronicler Matthew Paris that, in excoriating Raymond, he revived the charge of heresy levied against Raymond's ancestors. 134 The events of 1242 mark the conclusion of our story in more senses than one. Raymond's surrender effectively sealed the fate of Toulouse, ensuring that the treaty of 1229 would indeed be implemented and that Toulouse would pass into Capetian hands. The murder of the inquisitors, and Raymond's excommunication were followed in 1243 by the brutal suppression of the heretics of Montsegur, the last significant fortress still in Cathar hands, effectively ending the A1bigensian Crusade, although not the inquisitorial pursuit of heresy. After 1243, the ties between England and Toulouse were to some extent rebuilt. Henry III and Raymond were to cooperate in the mid-1240s as advocates of Emperor Frederick, and in December 1248 an embassy from the count was once again received at the English court.135 Shortly before his death, in September 1249, Raymond elected to be buried at Fontevraud, the ancestral necropolis of the Plantagenets, at the feet of his mother and his maternal kinsmen, kings Henry II and Richard I of England.136 In the obituary notice accorded him by Matthew Paris, Raymond is described as 'a strenuous and circumspect knight, the most beloved friend of the Pope'- a doubleedged compliment this, since Matthew had previously shown himself no particular admirer of the Pope, and had dubbed the Pope's 'friend', Count Raymond, a treacherous heretic.137 In effect, however, England's engagement with Raymond and the Albigensian Crusade had been brought to an inglorious end in 1242. With Raymond consigned to the grave, and without entirely abandoning his claims to the disputed territory of the Agenais, Henry III was forced to do his best to come to ·terms with Raymond's successor, Alfonse of Poitiers, the brother of Louis IX. 138 The Agenais, eventually restored to Plantagenet rule, was destined to remain a bone of contention for many decades to come. 139 It was not merely in the Agenais that memories of English involvement with Toulouse lived on. The English scholar John of Garland, reminiscing in the 1250s,

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was to recall his period in the university of Toulouse thirty years earlier as one of the unhappiest of his life. After three years of bad pay and hostility from the town's inhabitants, Garland had fled back to the more salubrious atmosphere of Paris. In the meantime he had added a substantial list of words to his newly-composed Dictionary, supplying the names of the many dozens of siege engines and machines of war whose remains still littered the outskirts of Toulouse, including the catapult which had brought about the death of Simon de Montfort. 140 At least one of the former servants of Count Raymond VII, William de Beville, ambassador from Toulouse in 1248, appears to have maintained close relations with the English court after Raymond's death. 141 He may even be identifiable with a namesake who appears in the 1260s as a supporter of the English barons against King Henry 111.' 42 If so then he would have kept remarkable company, since the rebellion of the 1260s was led by none other than Simon de Montfort, himself perhaps the most significant legacy bestowed upon England by the Albigensian Crusade. As a boy in the 1220s, the young Simon had spent time in the south, witness to his family's vain attempts to restore the riches and titles gained by his late father. In 1231 he had crossed to England, appropriately and perhaps not coincidentally at a low point in relations between Henry III and Count Raymond of Toulouse. There he had won possession of the lands and earldom first claimed by his father, and had swiftly established a reputation for aggressive piety very much in his father's image, expelling the Jews from Leicester. 143 The seal struck for Simon as earl of Leicester was modelled directly upon the seal that his father had used before his death in 1218. 144 Time and time again, Simon was to be reminded of his father's reputation: in 1242, when Count Raymond, out of ancestral hatred, is said to have sewn discord between Simon and the King; 145 later in the same decade, when his appointment as seneschal of Gascony was greeted with dismay by the local population all too familiar with de Montfort's family name; 146 again thereafter, in the 1250s and 1260s when acquaintances as diverse as the Lusignans and the Pope referred to his ancestry, either to justify their dislike for him or to urge him to emulate the elder Simon's achievements. 147 As late as 1259, Simon retained a residual, albeit entirely theoretical claim to the county of Toulouse.l48 It was a provocative move indeed for the King to nominate Simon, in 1249, to negotiate with Count Raymond's executors. 149 Friend of the Dominican order, itself brought to birth in the war against the heretics of Toulouse, much of Simon's zeal and arrogance can be traced to his paternal inheritance. 15° Without the reflected glory of his father to sustain him, it is questionable whether Simon would ever have risen so high in royal favour, or dared challenge the King to battle at Lewes, with all the momentous consequences that followed from that engagement.151 The Albigensian Crusade itself ended in 1243, arguably even in 1229, and English ambitions over Toulouse faded rapidly thereafter. Even so, and strange as it may seem, were it not for England's involvement with the Albigensian Crusade and hence with the de Montforts, the whole of English constitutional history might have taken a very different course. Had the suspicions that attended King John's alliance with Toulouse not put paid to his plans for a continental expedition in 1213, then there might have been no battle of Muret, and consequently neither a Capetian victory at Bouvines nor any of the resulting pressures that forced John into his award of Magna Carta. Had the older Simon de Montfort not triumphed at Muret,

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then it is highly questionable whether his son and namesake would have achieved such renown in the England of the 1240s and 1250s, and hence whether the younger Simon would have been in a position, forty years after his father's bloody triumphs, to embark on his makeshift but hugely significant attempts to manipulate the role of the English parliament in the aftermath of the battle of Lewes. Gazing even further back into the clouded depths of counterfactual hindsight, we may even question whether the Albigensian Crusade and the anti-heretical rhetoric which helped inspire it, were not themselves the product, at least in part, of Plantagenet ambitions to rule over Toulouse. From the territorial longings of King Henry II, via the slaughter of Beziers and Marmande, through to Magna Carta and the birth of Parliament, the fates of the kings of England and of the Cathar heretics of Languedoc were entwined in ways that even the direct participants in these events might have found surprising. Causation is a perilous concept, and one with which historians are only too ready to play tricks. Magna Carta and Parliament were no more the products of dualist heresy in Languedoc, than the hurricane is 'caused' by the proverbial trembling of the butterfly's wings. None the less, between southern French heresy and English parliamentary democracy, as between the hurricane and the butterfly, there stretch connections that should not be entirely dismissed. At the very least, and whatever we may make of the links between the Cathars and Mr Gladstone, I hope to have demonstrated here that English involvement in the Albigensian Crusade is a subject that historians, from Matthew Paris through to the present day, have been unjust to ignore. The history of thirteenth-century England should not be written in isolation from that of thirteenth-century Europe. In the newly emerging history of the Anglo-European thirteenth century, the Albigensian Crusade should be permitted to play its own distinctive part.

Notes For assistance with this article, and for further references, I am especially indebted to David Carpenter, Huw Ridgeway and Bjorn Weiler. After this paper was written, and too late to incorporate properly into my notes, I came across the article by C. Taylor, 'Pope Innocent III, John of England and the Albigensian Crusade (1209-1216)', in Pope Innocent Ill and His World, ed. J.C. Moore (Aldershot, 1999), 205-28. Whilst approaching the subject from a different angle to my own, Taylor offers a detailed chronological survey that supplements the account of the events of 1213-16 supplied below.

2 3 4

Oxford, Corpus Christi College ms.32 fo.92r no.17: 'Fuit in transmarinis homo dives, burgensis an miles fuerit nescio, in terra Albigeorum in villa que dicitur Carcassum, habens vetulam quandam pauperem'. The story, part of a collection apparently written down c. 1210, goes on to tell of the Jews of Carcassone and of their attempts to murder a clerk whose singing had annoyed them. The ms itself appears to have arrived in Oxford from the monastic library at Llanthony by Gloucester. Ibid., fo.94r no.21: 'Misse sunt Symoni de Monteforti relique multe ab urbe Constantinopol', recounting the legend of St Narcissus. R. Vaughan, Matthew Paris (Cambridge, 1958) 112, and note that later in the century, revising the annals of Osney for his own history, Thomas Wykes similarly chose to exclude much material relating to the Crusade: AM, iv 54-6. C. Tyerman, England and the Crusades 1095-1588 (Chicago/London, 1988), 90,

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7 8 9

10

11 12

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164, 166, 224; S. Lloyd, English Society and the Crusade I2/6-I307 (Oxford, 1988), 12, 14-15. Tyerman, England and the Crusades, 90; C. Tyerman, 'Some English Evidence of Attitudes to Crusading in the Thirteenth Century', Thirteenth Century England I, eds P.R. Coss and S.D. Lloyd (Woodbridge, 1986), 168-74. In general, see W.L. Warren, Henry II (London, 1973), 82-7, and for contemporary remarks on Eleanor's claim, see Robert of Torigny, 'Chronica', in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard/, ed. R. Howlett, 4 vols, RS (London, 18859), iv 201-3. For the most recent account of the 'high politics' of Toulouse during this period, see L. Mace, Les Comtes de Toulouse et leur entourage Xlle-Xlll siecles (Toulouse, 2000), esp. 23-53. 'Bellum ... quadragenarium Tholosanum', in William of Newburgh, 'Historia rerum Anglicarum', Chronicles, ed. Howlett, ii, 491. R. Benjamin, 'A Forty-Years War: Toulouse and the Plantagenets, 1156-96', Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, lxi (1988), 270-85. Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. W. Stubbs, 4 vols, RS (London, 1868-71 ), ii, 105-