Henry: Minority: Wise Government of Hubert de Burgh

From 1220 till 1227 government was in the hands of one of the ablest men of the time, Hubert de Burgh. He ruled wisely and well, and (luring these years the national party was in control. Hubert denied the papal claims upon England, and drove out the legates that the pope, Honorius III, had sent to manage the land in the interest of the Holy See. He attacked the foreigners, such as Peter des Roches and Fawkes de Breaute, who refused to obey the law of the land as shaped by Magna Carta, and drove them, too, out of England. He compelled Henry to confirm. Magna Carta for the third time, in 1225, giving the charter, now changed in many particulars, the final form in which it was to be embodied in the laws of the land.' Hubert was in some ways arbitrary and exacting, but he believed in England for the English, and upheld loyally the forms of government that had been developed by the kings and justiciars who had preceded him.

Coming of the Aliens

In 1227 Henry declared himself of age, and dismissing Hubert de Burgh, made Peter des Roches, a Poitevin and bishop of Winchester, justiciar in his place. An era of foreign influence and misgovernment began. Swarms of aliens settled upon England: first in 1232, then again in 1237 at the time of the king's marriage, and a third time between 1247 and 1258. Poitevins and Bretons, Germans, Italians, and Provencals, relatives of the king or his wife, flocked to England, attracted by the prospect of preferment and wealth. They received from the king not only gifts and pensions, but offices, lands, and important privileges also. Henry made his wife's uncle, Boniface of Savoy, archbishop of Canterbury; another uncle he made bishop of Hereford; scores of other aliens received offices of state, positions of trust, wardships of castles, and the like. The avarice of these foreigners exceeded all bounds. They sapped the country of its wealth, abused their inferiors, and played the part of petty despots. They forced itinerant justices, sheriffs, and bailiffs to harry the courts and to take therefrom the last penny. They plundered London, oppressed the Jews, despoiled the tenantry on their estates. Henry shared in the infamous work : he revoked old privileges that they might be bought back, sold charters, made levies on the monasteries, and enforced forest laws with exasperating rigor. The amount of money thus raised was enormous, but it was spent outside of England, and the king's treasury was always empty.

Papal Demands upon England

While aliens were thus holding high carnival in England, the popes were completing the work of reducing England to penury and its people to desperation. The mediaeval church was world-wide in spirit and claims. It demanded for itself universal authority, declared that kings and princes held their thrones at the will of the pope, and that the temporal power was ordained of God to be subject to the spiritual. Innocent III was almost the only pope that had made good these claims, but for a century his successors were to assert them. The church, which was in fact a great mediaeval state including all countries within its sway, saw in the growth of an independent and national kingdom like England a menace to its own authority. Innocent had concerned himself with temporal matters in nearly every state in Europe, and both he and his successors looked on England as especially under their control on account of John's oath of fealty. Henry had confirmed this oath, and in so doing had laid England open to papal interference of the most sweeping character.

This interference took two forms : the demand for money, and the exercise of the right to fill English ecclesiastical positions with foreigners, chiefly Italians. The popes after Honorius, the successor to Innocent, needing money for the war with the emperor, Frederick II (1226-1250), reduced the demands on England to a science. England became a "garden of delight." "Verily," said Innocent IV, "England is an inexhaustible well, and where many things abound, from the many can much be extorted." Year by year heavier sums were demanded, individuals were compelled to make payment, taxes were levied, and church estates plundered. In the year 1245, sixty thousand marks, a sum double the income of the crown itself, was sent to Rome. Italians were forced into bishoprics and other benefices. Many of these foreigners were illiterate and ignorant, of irreligious lives and character, greedy and unscrupulous. The church became impoverished, and religious life sank to a low state of efficiency.