CHAP. V. 1254 Parlia mentary ties that in its main features it cannot be doubted: ' it fully accounts for the vengeance taken upon the Bishop of Hereford ten years later than this. Meanwhile the parliamentary struggle continued, opposition. rising and falling with monotonous variation. The magnates who assembled in January 1254, in the kings absence, refused his demand for an aid, suspecting that his pretext, the state of Gascony, was nothing but a false alarm: they promised however to go in person to help him should it appear to be necessary. It is remarkable as a step in the theory of assent to taxation that the bishops and abbots, while promising an aid on their own account, refused to bind the rest of the clergy by the same obligation.2 The partial good-will shown by the magnates on this occasion was soon cooled by the discovery that the king had been attempting to dupe them. They assembled after Easter to hear his renewed requests. They were made, as before, on the ground that an invasion by the King of Castile was imminent. This was a strange excuse, seeing that just at this time Eleanor of Castile was formally betrothed to Prince Edward. Refusal of Unfortunately too for Henry, Simon de Montfort was present, and was able to give the magnates information as to the real state of things in the province, which confirmed them in their decision not to send aid till they were better certified as to the truth aid. 1 Ann. Osn. 107. In Ann. Burt. 360 it is said that the Bishop of Hereford feigned himself proctor of several religious houses, and so brought them into debt; so too Ann. Dunst. 199; Matt. Par. 910. Flor. Wigorn. 185 says that almost all religious houses in England were bound for sums varying between 200 and 500 marks. Cf. Ann. St. Albans 373-385. Matt. Par. 881: cf. Richards report of this to his brother, Id. Additam. 189. CHAP. V. 1254-55 mands. of the Spanish invasion. It was strange, they said, that they never heard of such a danger when the Earl of Leicester was in Gascony. So the council was dissolved, and Henrys ruse failed.' On the kings return, after Christmas 1254, the council, which met first at Portsmouth, was shifted to London, and then to Winchester, and was finally dissolved without any result.2 At the Easter Parliament of 1255, which Constituwas very largely attended, the barons answered the tional dekings request for money, this time in the shape of horngeld, by a renewal of the demand for the power of electing the three chief officers of the Crown. They now supported the claim by a reference to ancient custom, though history would hardly bear them. out on this head. They also laid to his charge fresh violations of the charters, and, as the king would not yield to their request, Parliament was prorogued, in order that some change of feeling might induce one party or the other to give way.3 The names of those who were present at this Parliament are not preserved to us, so that we do not know whether Simon de Montfort was there or not. He was in England, at any rate, in the preceding autumn,1 and there is no reason to suppose, especially after his 1 Ann. Dunst. 190; Matt. Par. 887, per comitem Simonem, qui tunc de partibus rediit transmarinis, edocti, &c.' From the context it is most probable that these words refer to the present council; if not they can only refer to that of January. It was to the Parliament of April 1254 that four knights representative were summoned from each county, being the first certain instance of such representation since 1213: see Stubbs, Sel. Chart. 367. Ann. Tewk. 155. Ann. Burt. 336; Ann. Dunst. 195; Matt. Par. 904, 'Exigebant ut de communi consilio. . . eligerent, sicut ab antiquo consuetum et justum.' He was present at the burial of W. de Cantilupe, 30 Sept., 1254, and with the Earl of Hereford bore the body to the grave.-Ann. Dunst. 192. CHAP. V. 1255 The Sicilian scheme; pressed by the Popes. nominal reconciliation with the king, that he absented himself. He had been so far reinstated in his former position as to be sent in the summer of 1254 on a confidential errand to Scotland, with a message for the king, so secret and important that it could not be trusted to paper.1 What its import was one can only guess. By this time the real cause of the kings renewed demands had become known. The late Pope, Innocent IV, had endeavoured to make Henry his firm ally by appealing to his dynastic ambition. He had first of all offered the throne of the Two Sicilies, as a fief of the Church, escheated after the death of Frederick, to Richard of Cornwall; and when that cautious and somewhat miserly prince drew back, he chose the kings younger son Edmund as the recipient of his favour. The weak but ambitious father, with his usual imprudence, eagerly took the bait, and this was the crusade for which the tenth was to be granted. The enemies of the Church were the imperialists: the promised land was Sicily instead of Palestine. The great emperor and his two sons were dead, but the Ghibeline party did not perish with them, and Manfred, Prince of Tarento, natural son of Frederick, was not likely to yield without a struggle. But the king shut his eyes to all difficulties, and the death of Innocent IV in 1254 caused no interruption, for his successor, Alexander IV, took up the scheme with equal energy. Innocent had extended the grant of the tenth to Henry for a further It is strange that Dr. Pauli should declare Mrs. Greens allusion to this embassy (Princesses ii. 111) ‘totally unfounded,' when the appointment appears in a writ, Pat. Vascon., 38 Hen. III, m. 8, p. 2, quoted in the Fœdera. It was perhaps connected with the marriage of Margaret. Bull for Richard, 5 Aug., 1252; for Edmund, 6 Mar., 1254, in the Fœdera. CHAP. V. 1255 term of two years; he had bidden both king and queen to abstain from useless expenses, in order the better to prosecute the affair; more than once he urged Henry to enter actively on it, and one of the last acts of his life was to bid him hasten to the protection of Apulia, or he would have to find some other more worthy of the throne. Even Richard, though too cautious to undertake the conquest of Sicily, could not withstand the temptation of an imperial crown; Henry urged his election, in the Ambition hope of an accession of strength against France; the of Henry; Pope eagerly promoted the same object, and he was crowned at Aachen, though only supported by a portion of the Electors, in 1257. Henry, once started on this ambitious policy, could not stop; and though unable to hold his provinces in France, accepted the worthless offer of half the lands belonging to the King of Castile in Africa as a dowry for Alfonsos sister.3 The Pope, while allowing him to change his vow of crusade for the help to be given to the Church in Sicily, would not go so far as to let him dispute with the Saracens in Africa this chimerical possession.* The conditions on which the kingdom of the Two his agreeSicilies was given to Edmund were embodied in a formal agreement in 1255, by which the future king was reduced to the position of a mere slave of Rome, restricted in a most degrading manner under terms which no feudal lord would have thought of imposing on a vassal. The obligations entered into by the king included the immediate liquidation of a debt of more than 135,000 marks, said to have been incurred 1 Fad. i. 303. 8 Id. i. 301. 2 Id. i. 302, 304, 312. • Id. i. 304, 316; Roy. Letters ii. 112. ment with the Pope. V. CHAP. by the Pope in the conquest of the land. The negotiations connected with this engagement are the prominent feature of the next few years, and did more than anything else to bring about the catastrophe. 1255 The Sicilian scheme checked; its unpopularity in England. The attempts made by the Pope to expel Manfred from Southern Italy were not successful. The papal forces were almost annihilated by that prince, aided by a large body of Saracens, whom Frederick had settled at Nocera. Shortly before this event the Bishop of Bologna had been sent with the ring of investiture to England, and on his arrival the king lost no time in getting the ceremony performed, and in addressing his son in public as King of Sicily and Apulia. His paternal pride was however destined to receive a rude check. The scheme was thoroughly unpopular in the country; the report that a papal legate was on the point of arriving added greatly to the general discontent, while the attitude of many of the greater barons, at this time thought to have been bought over by the king, brought the nation to the verge of despair. The Earl of Leicester, the one steadfast friend of national liberty, was probably at this time absent in France. He had gone thither on business of his own, and was empowered to prolong the truce, as it was a matter of great importance that no obstacle should prevent the passage of the army which Henry, with a childish sanguineness, hoped to convey to Italy.2 1 Matt. Par. 911. The Earls of Gloucester, Warenne, Lincoln, and Devon are mentioned as having been thus corrupted, but not the Earl of Leicester; cf. id. 846. 2 The truce was prolonged by S. de Montfort and P. of Savoy in 1255, according to the writs in Fad. i. 324, for three years, though from subsequent events the period seems only to have been one year. Early in 1256 P. de Montfort was sent to France, to amend and con |