CHAPTER IV. THE OXFORD STATUTES. "If then we shall shake off our slavish yoke, . WHILE profusion had brought the King to penury, the dearth of provisions had, at this period, spread misery among the people, and prepared them more readily for some public expression of the general discontent. The bad weather of 1257 had prevented the ripening of all fruits and corn; wheat had remained uncut even to November, and so great was the urgency to carry the harvest, that even Sundays and other church festivals were so employed, if the weather permitted. Wheat, which had in 1255 been at the price of 2s. a quarter, now rose to 208. or 24s.; horseflesh and even the bark of trees became articles of food'. During this famine, the King, by an invidious exercise of his prerogative, seized and forestalled for his own purveyance the corn which Prince Richard had imported from abroad in fifty vessels; London, however, resisted this as a breach of their charters with such effect, that by a legal decision the King was required to come into the market like others, with the 1 M. Paris. Taxter Chr. (1258), "20,000 Londini attenuati fame."Chr. Evesh. Lel. Coll. v. 1. advantage only of buying his corn there at 2d. a quarter below the market price1. There was a wide-spread desire and expectancy of some remedy for the long course of mismanagement, and it was at this crisis that many of the great barons confederated with the fixed resolution to devise and enforce a reform of the abuses of the Royal government. All the barons at this time must have had more Norman blood in them than English, but their assimilation in feeling with the country, into whose vital interest the strong hold of the Conqueror had grafted them, was now so far advanced that they resented the intrusion of any fresh stock of aliens into their privileges. Having met therefore at Oxford at the time appointed with their retainers, to the number of 60,000, armed as if prepared for the Welch war, their manifest strength sufficed to overpower the alien faction which had guided the King, and the statutes then enacted, which continued for seven years the source of civil discord, were accepted and sworn to by King Henry with a constrained assent. Without detailing these well-known enactments, it may be stated here, that they confirmed Magna Charta, provided for the orderly inheritance of property, forbade the disparaging marriages of wards and the wasteful grants to aliens, and required that the officers of state and the fortresses of the kingdom should be put into the hands of Englishmen only. The necessity for this latter stipulation was proved by fifteen* of the principal castles, as well as the Cinque Ports, being at this very time under foreign governors. Following the example of Magna Charta, twenty-four persons were appointed to watch over the rigid execution of these laws, twelve being 1 Fabyan's Chr. 2 Dover, Northampton, Corfe, Scarborough, Nottingham, Hereford, Exeter, Sarum, Hadleigh, Winchester, Porchester, Bruges, [Bridgewater,] Oxford, Sherburne, and London.See Nichols's Leicest. 324 Conseillers de aide le Roi." -Rog. Hoved. The King, in his proclamation (May 2, Westminster) had engaged, by oath, to reform the Government according to the advice of twelve elected by himself, and twelve to be elected by the barons at the meeting at Oxford, which was to last a month (in unum mensem). chosen by each party. On the barons' side, among the most conspicuous, may be named (though the lists of various' authors differ) the Earls of Leicester and Gloucester, Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford, Roger le Bigot the Earl Marshal, Walter Cantilupe the Bishop of Worcester, the powerful Marcher Roger de Mortimer, and Peter de Montfort, a cousin of Simon's; while, on the other side, the twelve nominated by the King comprise but one independent nobleman, John de Plesseys, Earl of Warwick, his own three half-brothers, his nephew, Prince Henry, his brother-in-law, Earl de Warenne, his two secretaries, John Mansel, treasurer of York, and Henry Wengham3, Fulk Bassett, Bishop of London, who was as much a friend of the barons as of the King, and a few inferior persons. As this "mad parliament" of Oxford sat in deliberation for the unusually long period of a month, and was attended by about 100 barons', nearly the whole number then entitled to be summoned, the attendance being commonly but twenty or thirty, the King's continued resistance to such a pressure was evidently hopeless, when he could prevail on so few of the great barons to act as his friends at such a crisis. The different temper of the parties to these Oxford Statutes was displayed, when the oath of their observance was Prince Edward and the King's brothers signed this preparatory document.-Rymer. 1 Roger Hoveden.-Ann. Burton. 2 He had become earl by marrying Margery, [sister and heiress of the last earl, Thomas de Newburg,] and died without issue, 1263. 3 On the resignation of William de Kilkenny, Chancellor from 1254 to St. Edward's Day, 1255, the Great Seal was delivered to Henry de Wengham, and as Chancellor made oath to seal with it only according to the directions of the twenty-four barons, appointed by the provisions of the Oxford Parliament, 1258 (Ann. Burton). When he was displaced (Oct. 18, 1260) by Nicholas de Ely, Arch deacon of Ely, the seal was broken up, and the pieces given by the King "to Robert Waleran to be presented to some religious house of the King's gift."- (Rot. Pat. 44° Hen. III.) Lord Campbell's Chancellors, 1. 148. Wengham became Bishop of London, 1259, and died 1261, having had a grant from the King to retain two deaneries, ten rich prebends, and other benefices, besides his bishopric (Rot. Pat. 43 H. III). There were about 250 baronies at this time, but many were in the King's hand, and several barons held a great many each; Prince Richard, Earl of Cornwall, held eighteen.See Nichols's Leic. tendered, for "the King who was the first to set them aside, was the first also to swear to them'," while Prince Edward followed with avowed reluctance'; Prince Henry, who had been recently knighted by his father at Aix-la-Chapelle, excused himself on account of his youth, as needing the sanction of his father, whose absence abroad probably emboldened the barons on this occasion, and having no land of his own to constitute him a baron, his plea obtained a delay of 40 days. The King's half-brothers, and his brother-in-law de Warenne, not only refused compliance, but swore, "by the death and wounds of God," never to surrender the castles which the King had committed to their charge. Simon de Montfort, on the contrary, declared that he took the oath as a religious tie upon his conscience, “never under any pretence to break the pledge he was solemnly contracting, whatever others might do." It is indeed singularly strange to observe that this rigorous expulsion and exclusion from office of all foreigners should have been guided and executed by a foreigner. But, being himself an alien, de Montfort surrendered accordingly his own castles of Kenilworth and Odiham, and then felt himself entitled to address the recusants, especially his old enemy William de Valence, who had been the most vehement in his protests and defiance: "To a certainty you shall either give up your castles or lose your head." 5 This threat, coming from a man well known to be able and willing to execute it, was lost upon them, and the recusants stole away unobserved from Oxford, at the hour when others were at dinner, to Wolvesham Castle, where they hoped their brother, the Bishop of Winchester, would be able to protect them. So hot a pursuit, however, was set on foot, that the unpopular fugitives were soon reduced to submission, 1 Chr. Lanerc. Four counsellors were appointed to him, probably as sureties for his observance, John de Baliol, John de Gray, Stephen Longespee, and Roger de Montalt.-Ann. Burton. 3 Letter in Ann. Burton. 5"Ulvesham."-Ann. Burt. The palace in Winchester is still called Wolvesey. and it is even said, that the bishop recommend them to surrender quietly, as being justly punished for their former misdeeds'. Though the King, who accompanied the besiegers, used every endeavour to obtain better terms for them, the barons were now inexorable in requiring the immediate exile of all aliens on pain of death, reserving only to Aymer as a bishop, and to William de Valence as Lord of Pembroke, the option of remaining under sureties for good behaviour. These, though thus excepted, would not separate their fate from the others, and all accordingly resolved to quit England, venting their spleen even against the Queen, as having, from jealousy of their court favour, contrived their ruin and involved them in her own unpopularity. It is certainly remarkable that her own uncles, Peter of Savoy and Archbishop Boniface, remained unmolested and were publicly employed. This strong measure of banishment was additionally recommended to the barons, by the treatment they had remarked in two recent instances of English Princesses married to foreign Sovereigns, when their train of English attendants had been scrupulously dismissed both by the Emperor and the King of Scotland-a prudent step on all such occasions, the neglect of which is sure to excite jealousies. The Earl de Warenne, thus left alone in his opposition to the Oxford Statutes, now at length yielding to circumstances, pledged himself by oath to their maintenance. Dover and other castles were now put into native hands, and Hugh le Bigot being made Justiciary of England, was "sworn to do justice in spite of the King, the Queen, their sons, or any living person, uninfluenced by hate or love, 1 W. Rish. de bello Lew., inconsistently with his usual opinions, represents the bishop on this occasion as a man of conspicuous sanctity. 2 R. Hoved. Ann. Burt. W. Rish. 3 These other castles were, Bamborough, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Scarbo rough, Haldesham, Nottingham, Northampton, the Tower of London, Rochester, Canterbury, Winchester, Porchester, Corfe, Sarum, Devizes, Exeter, Bridgewater, Gloucester, Hereford, Oxford, Horestan.-Ann. de Burton, p. 453. P. |