Free The Plantagenets: The Kings That Made Britain by Derek Wilson Page B

1254 Henry paid a state visit to Louis IX in Paris, and he took this golden opportunity to impress his host and all of Paris with his kingly beneficence. He fed crowds of the capital’s poor before entertaining his host at a sumptuous banquet and distributing expensive gifts to the French nobility. Small wonder that he arrived back in England heavily in debt, having squandered all the money he had set aside for his crusade.
    The king was psychologically incapable of tightening his belt. He borrowed heavily and was largely bankrolled by his brother, Richard. He began collecting again for a crusade and committed himself up to the hilt for the Sicilian venture, promising 135,000 marks to the pope for his help in gaining the crown for Edmund. But this scheme was not the only grandiose, self-deluding vision in which he indulged. He saw himself as a lead actor on a wider stage than England: he made plans to join with Alfonso of Castile in an expedition into Muslim North Africa, and he persuaded his brother Richard to take part in a papal conspiracy against the Emperor Frederick II by accepting the imperial title ‘King of the Romans’. All the old problems continued but became worse. The king demanded money from a reluctant parliament, which responded by demanding political reforms. Henry exploited to the full every possible source of revenue,and this drew him into violations of Magna Carta. Opposition to the king deepened and widened, though many attributed his misrule to the influence of his foreign advisers.
    In 1257 all Henry’s birds came home to roost. The pope was pressing him for the money he owed, but parliament disapproved of the Sicilian venture and refused to finance it. Richard left for his coronation in Aachen and was no longer available either to lend his brother money or offer him sound advice. Llewelyn-ap-Gruffydd was laying waste parts of the Welsh border and had the backing of Henry’s son-in-law, Alexander of Scotland. When Henry finally got round to leading an expedition to north Wales he achieved nothing and had to make a humiliating peace with Llewelyn. Archbishop Boniface turned against the king by summoning a convocation of bishops and clergy, which presented the king with a list of grievances. The royal court was split into factions, and even Prince Edward, now 19, declared against some of his father’s policies. Personal grief was added to political difficulty when Henry’s three-year-old daughter died.
    1258
    The parliament that met in April 1258 faced a dilemma. Its members wanted to impose administrative reforms and policy changes on the king – they especially wanted him to withdraw from the Sicilian adventure and get rid of his Poitevin advisers – but that would mean inducing Henry to abandon his oath to Pope Alexander, who might well respond by excommunicating the king and placing Englandunder an interdict (the withdrawal of all services performed by the clergy). In the event, anger at Henry’s foreign policy and its crippling financial cost drove parliament, which is sometimes known as the ‘Mad (Angry) Parliament’, to drastic measures. Led by Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, seven barons took the lead in presenting Henry with a list of demands. They persuaded parliament to declare that they would support the raising of a new tax (a general aid) only if the king would accept a programme of reform and negotiate a fresh agreement about Sicily with the pope. In his usual, weak-willed way Henry accepted this ultimatum.
    A council of 24 was appointed to draw up a programme of reform, and 12 of the king’s councillors met with 12 baronial representatives at Oxford in June. They agreed the Provisions of Oxford, which has sometimes been called the foundation of parliamentary democracy, a development even more important than Magna Carta. It should, more accurately however, be seen as one step in a long journey towards the restraint of arbitrary royal power.
    There is no preserved official