The Magnificent Century

by Thomas B. Costain

  The work reached a stage of completion which made it possible to hold the ceremony of translation on October 13, 1269. It was a great day for the stout and asthmatic King. For a quarter of a century he had labored and persevered. Much of his life had been spent in the shadow of debt that this work might go on. Wars had been fought and battles lost, but he had never faltered. And he had lived to see the completion of the great church which was to serve as his final resting place. He must have realized as he walked with some difficulty in the procession from St. Paul’s that the time was drawing near when his servants would gird his bones in and he would be laid in this elaborate grave he had provided for himself in the environs of the city against which he had always contended.

  The members of the royal family, with the assistance, no doubt, of some strong baronial arms, carried the coffin of the Confessor back into the abbey and deposited it in the new tomb.

  2

  The King had three years to live after the ceremony of translation. The days were filled with lawsuits arising out of the restoration of confiscated lands and the bitter grumbling of royalist followers who were being forced to disgorge. They were acrimonious days for the contestants, quiet days for everyone else, and so no purpose would be served in going over the various stages of legislation made necessary by the tangled problems of restitution.

  As Prince Edward had started off for the Crusades, taking his brother Edmund with him as well as the wife from whom separation was now unthinkable, his pockets comfortably lined by the huge sums granted him by the Church, the burden of government fell on the bent back of the King. Henry allowed himself as always to become immersed in detail. He passed a statute forbidding Jews to acquire the lands of their debtors. He decided to pay homage to the new King of France for his possessions in that country and borrowed a large sum from merchants of London to cover the expense of traveling; then changed his mind and did not go, using the money for other purposes. He protested bitterly against any lifting of the ban on the murderers of Henry of Almaine, even though Guy de Montfort, the chief offender, followed the Pope on foot, naked save for an undershirt and with a halter around his neck, begging to be forgiven. He wrote to Edward in Palestine on February 6, 1271, telling him that the royal physicians gave him no hope of recovery from the ailments which beset him and entreating his son and heir to finish with the Saracens and hurry home.

  When a dispute between the people of Norwich and the church authorities reached a stage of bloodshed, the King felt called upon to travel there in an effort to settle matters. Having imposed heavy penalties on the townspeople, he began the return journey and was stricken suddenly at Bury St. Edmunds. It became apparent to everyone in the royal train that his end was drawing near. He moved with the greatest difficulty, his face was gray, his hands shook. Nevertheless, he was determined to reach London as soon as possible. He came to the Tower in dying condition.

  It was perhaps to be expected that the people of London would be rioting over grievances at this very moment. The streets were filled with the contentious townsmen. Henry had never been able to get along with London, a lifelong rift for which he was himself responsible. There was to be no amelioration of this condition at the last: he was fated to die at Westminster with the rebellious tumult of the city sounding faintly in his ears.

  He breathed his last on Wednesday, November 16, 1272, the weathercock King, the unsteady, unready, unreliable King, the generally unpopular and sometimes hated King, now at the finish the Old King, the Good Old King.

  He had outlived almost everyone who had played parts in the saga of these eventful years. The actors had been a colorful lot, numbering among them some outright villains, many supposedly chivalrous knights with false hearts under their chain mail, a few amusing clowns, many curious and devious individuals. But the period had been noteworthy for the many great men it produced, for the eagles in the sky who beat their wings, sometimes with little effect, against the adverse winds. Two of the authentic eagles were alive: Edward, now the King, and Roger Bacon. The rest were gone: Stephen Langton, the sage leader of the reform movement, who had died in the surety that the Great Charter was forever safe from interfering hands; Simon de Montfort, the passionate crusader for the rights of common men, who had been less fortunate in his final moments but whose work would be carried on; the somewhat less notable eagles of this notable era, the Good Knight, Robert Grosseteste, Edmund Rich, even, with somewhat tarnished wings, Hubert de Burgh; gone to find loftier eyries, beyond a doubt, than the skies of England afforded.

  Selected Bibliography

  So much reading was required in the preparation of this book that a complete list of sources consulted would be unnecessarily long. In addition to the standard histories, the books listed have been particularly useful.

  HISTORY

  Addison, C. G. The Knights Templars. New York, 1874.

  Bayley, John. History of the Tower of London. London, 1821.

  Benoit, Fernand. (ed.) Recueil des Actes des Contes de Provence appartenant à la Maison de Barcelona, Alphonse II et Raimond Berenger V. 2 vols. Monaco, 1925.

  Brooks, F. W. The English Naval Forces, 1199–1272. London, 1932.

  Callender, Geoffrey. The Naval Side of British History. London, 1924.

  Gregorovius, F. History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages. London, 1902.

  Gross, Chas. Sources and Literature of English History. New York, 1915.

  Hannay, David. Short History of the Royal Navy, 1217–1815. London, 1898.

  Harvey, John. Gothic England. New York, 1947.

  Joinville, Jean de. The History of St. Louis. London, 1938.

  Lloyd, John Edward. History of Wales from the Earliest Times to the Edwardian Conquest. London, 1948.

  MacKenzie, Hugh. The Anti-foreign Movement in England; 1231–2. Boston, 1929.

  Matthew of Paris. English History 1235–1273. London, 1853.

  Mayer, Paul. (ed.) Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal. Paris, 1891–1901.

  Milman, H, H. History of Latin Christianity. New York, 1903.

  Norgate, Kate. England under the Angevin Kings. New York, 1887.

  Orpen, Goddard H. Ireland under the Normans, 1216–1333. Oxford, 1920.

  Pollock, Sir Frederick, and Maitland, F. W. History of English Law before the Time of Edward I. Boston, 1899.

  Powicke, F. M. King Henry III and the Lord Edward. 2 vols. Oxford, 1947.

  Ramsey, Sir James H. Dawn of the Constitution or the Reign of Henry III and Edward I, 1216–1307. London, 1911.

  Riley, H. T. (ed.) Chronicles of the Mayors and Sheriffs of London, 1188–1274. London, 1863.

  Sedgwick, Henry D. Italy in the Thirteenth Century. Boston, 1933.

  Stubbs, William. The Constitutional History of England in its Origin and Development. Oxford, 1896.

  _____. Historical Introduction to the Rolls Series. New York, 1902.

  Tout, T. F. 1216–1377. Vol. 3 of The Political History of England, ed. by Hunt and Poole, London, 1905.

  Walsh, James J. The Thirteenth, Greatest of Centuries. New York, 1909.

  Williamson, J. Bruce. The History of the Temple. London, 1924.

  Yonge, Charlotte Mary. Cameos from English History. London, 1880.

  BIOGRAPHY

  Bémont, Charles. Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, 1208–1265. Oxford, 1930.

  Bridges, John Henry. The Life and Work of Roger Bacon, An introduction to the Opus Majus. London, 1914.

  Campbell, Lord John. Lives of the Lord Chancellors of England. London, 1856.

  Clifford, Edmund. Greatest of all the Plantagenets, Edward I. London, 1860.

  Denholm-Young, N. Richard of Cornwall. New York, 1947.

  Green, Mary A. E. Lives of the Princesses of England. London, 1857.

  Harvey, John. The Plantagenets. London, 1948.

  Hook, Walter F. Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury. London, 1876.

  Jarman, Thomas L. William Marshal, First Earl of Pembroke. Oxford, 1930.

  Jenks
, Edward. Edward Plantagenet, The English Justinian, or The Making of the Common Law. New York, 1902.

  Lancaster, Osbert. Our Sovereigns. London, 1937.

  Leonard, Jonathan N. Crusaders of Chemistry (Roger Bacon). New York, 1930.

  Lindsay, Philip. Kings of Merry England. London, 1936.

  Mann, Horace K. Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages. London, 1929.

  Newman, John H. Lives of the English Saints. New York, 1902.

  Norgate, Kate. Minority of Henry III. London, 1912.

  Perry, Frederick. Saint Louis. New York, 1901.

  Perry, George G. The Life and Times of Robert Grosseteste. London, 1871.

  Powicke, F. M. Stephen Langton. Oxford, 1928.

  Prothero, George W. Simon de Montfort. London, 1877.

  Sanchez-Perez, José A. Alfonso X, el Sabio. Vol. XIII. Madrid, 1935.

  Stevenson, Francis B. Robert Grosseteste. New York, 1899.

  Strickland, Agnes. Lives of the Queens of England. London, 1840–48.

  Tout, T. F. Edward I. New York, 1893.

  Woodcock, W. and R. Lives of the Lord Mayors of London. London, 1846.

  Woodruff, F. Winthrop. Roger Bacon, A Biography. London, 1938.

  Wright, Thomas. The History of Fulk Fitzwarine. London, 1840.

  LOCAL HISTORY AND SPECIAL STUDIES

  Bourilly, V. L., and Busquet, R. La Provence au Moyen Age. Marseilles, 1924.

  Cam, Helen M. The Hundred and the Hundred Rolls. London, 1930.

  Clark, G. T. The Earls, Earldom and Castles of Pembroke. Tenby, 1880.

  Dixon, William H. Royal Windsor. London, 1879.

  Everett, Elizabeth. Provence in History and Song. Boston, 1936.

  Green, John R. Oxford Studies. London, 1901.

  Hayes, Alfred. “The Strategy of the Battle of Evesham.” In Proceedings of the Birmingham Archeological Society, 1920.

  Heales, Alfred. The Records of Merton Priory. London, 1898.

  Hennings, M. A. England under Henry III. New York, 1932.

  Kingsford, C. L. (ed.) The Song of Lewes. Oxford, 1890.

  Knox, Winifred F. Court of a Saint. London, 1909.

  Maiden, Henry E. “The Campaign of Lewes.” In United Services Magazine, 1899.

  March, Frank B. English Rule in Gascony. Ann Arbor, 1928.

  Morris, W. A. The Medieval English Sheriff. London, 1927.

  New, Herbert. Simon de Montfort and the Battle of Evesham. London, 1874.

  Newbold, William R. The Cipher of Roger Bacon. Philadelphia, 1928.

  Powicke, F. M. Ways of Medieval Life and Thought. London, 1950.

  Rees, William. South Wales and the March. New York, 1924.

  Salter, H. C. Medieval Oxford. Oxford, 1886.

  Salzman, L. F. English Trade in the Middle Ages. Oxford, 1931.

  Stathan, S. P. H. History of the Castle, Town and Port of Dover. London, 1899.

  Stephens, W. R. M. “The Battle of Lewes.” British Archeological Journal, 1884.

  Stow, John. The Survey of London. New York, 1912.

  Unwin, George. The Gilds and Companies of London. London, 1909.

  Walsh, James J. Medieval Medicine. London, 1920.

  Woolridge, Harry E. The Polyphonic Period. Oxford, 1901–5.

  RELIGION AND EDUCATION

  Ady, Julia M. The Pilgrim’s Way. London, 1893.

  Belloc, Hilaire. The Old Road. London, 1904.

  Bumpus, T. F. The Cathedrals of England and Wales. London, 1905.

  Haskins, C. H. The Rise of the Universities. New York, 1923.

  Hutton, Edward. The Franciscans in England. London, 1927.

  Jessopp, A. The Coming of the Friars. London, 1895.

  Knowles, David. The Monastic Order in England, 943–1316. Cambridge, 1949.

  Masseron, Alexandre. The Franciscans. London, 1931.

  Moorman, J. R. Church Life in England in the Thirteenth Century. Cambridge, 1945.

  Schachner, Nathan. The Medieval Universities. New York, 1938.

  Scudder, Vida D. The Franciscan Adventure. London, 1931.

  Sharp, Dorothea E. Franciscan Philosophy at Oxford in the Thirteenth Century. London, 1930.

  Stanley, Arthur P. Historical Memorials of Westminster Abbey. London, 1869.

  Taylor, Henry O. The Medieval Mind. London, 1911.

  Tyack, G. S. Pilgrims’ Signs in W. Andrews’ Church Treasury. London, 1898.

  LIFE AND CUSTOMS

  Brooke, I., and Laver, Jas. English Costume. New York, 1937.

  Calthrop, Dion C. English Costume. London, 1923.

  Capefigue, N. Les Cours d’Amour. Paris, 1863.

  Clinch, George. English Costume. London, 1909.

  Coulton, G. G. Life in the Middle Ages. Cambridge, 1929.

  _____. Medieval Panorama. New York, 1947.

  _____. Five Centuries of Religion. Vol. II, The Friars and the Dead Weight of Tradition. Cambridge, 1939.

  Crump, C. G., and Jacob, E. F. (eds.) The Legacy of the Middle Ages. Oxford, 1926.

  Davenport, Millia. The Book of Costume. New York, 1948.

  Dawson, W. F. Christmas, Its Origin and Associations. London, 1902.

  Fairholt, F. W. Costume in England. London, 1846.

  Hill, Georgiana. A History of English Dress. New York, 1893.

  Hill, Raymond T., and Bergin, Thos. G. Anthology of Provençal Troubadours. New Haven, 1941.

  Lang, Paul H. Music in Western Civilization. New York, 1941.

  Miles, Clement A. Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan. London, 1912.

  Reese, Gustave. Music in the Middle Ages. New York, 1940.

  Rutherford, John. The Troubadours; Their Loves and Lyrics. London, 1873.

  Sainte-Palaye, Jean B. Literary History of the Troubadours. London, 1779.

  Strutt, Joseph. Sport and Pastimes of the People of England. London, 1810.

  _____. Dress and Habits of the People of England. London, 1842.