abilities. This prelate had been left by King John justiciary and regent of the kingdom during an expedition which that prince made into France; and his illegal administration was one chief cause of that great combination among the barons which finally extorted from the crown the charter of liberties, and laid the foundations of the English constitution. Henry, though incapable, from his character, of pursuing the same violent maxims which had governed his father, had imbibed the same arbitrary principles; and, in prosecution of Peter's advice, he invited over a great number of Poictevins, and other foreigners, who, he believed, could more safely be trusted than the English, and who seemed useful to counterbalance the great and independent power of the nobility [m]. Every office and command was bestowed on these strangers: they exhausted the revenues of the crown, already too much impoverished [n]; they invaded the rights of the people; and their insolence, still more provoking than their power, drew on them the hatred and envy of all orders of men in the kingdom [o].
Paris, p. 268.]
[MN 1233.] The barons formed a combination against this odious ministry, and withdrew from Parliament, on pretence of the danger to which they were exposed from the machinations of the Poictevins. When again summoned to attend, they gave for answer, that the king should dismiss his foreigners, otherwise they would drive both him and them out of the kingdom, and put the crown on another head more worthy to wear it [p]: such was the style they used to their sovereign! They at last came to Parliament, but so well attended, that they seemed in a condition to prescribe laws to the king and ministry. Peter des Roches, however, had in the interval found means of sowing dissension among them, and of bringing over to his party the Earl of Cornwall, as well as the Earls of Lincoln and Chester. The confederates were disconcerted in their measures: Richard, Earl Mareschal, who had succeeded to that dignity on the death of his brother William, was chased into Wales; he thence withdrew into Ireland, where he was treacherously murdered by the contrivance of the Bishop of Winchester [q]. The estates of the more obnoxious barons were confiscated, without legal sentence or trial by their peers [r], and were bestowed with a profuse liberality on the Poictevins. Peter even carried his insolence so far as to declare publicly, that the barons of England must not pretend to put themselves on the same footing with those of France; or assume the same liberties and privileges: the monarch in the former country had a more absolute power than in the latter. It had been more justifiable for him to have said, that men, so unwilling to submit to the authority of laws, could with the worst grace claim any shelter or protection from them.
Paris, p. 265.]
When the king at any time was checked in his illegal practices, and when the authority of the great charter was objected to him, he was wont to reply, "Why should I observe this charter, which is neglected by all my grandees, both prelates and nobility?" It was very reasonably said to him, "You ought, sir, to set them the example [s]."
So violent a ministry as that of the Bishop of Winchester could not be of long duration; but its fall proceeded at last from the influence of the church, not from the efforts of the nobles. Edmond, the primate, came to court, attended by many of the other prelates, and represented to the king the pernicious measures embraced by Peter des Roches, the discontents of his people, the ruin of his affairs; and, after requiring the dismission of the minister and his associates, threatened him with excommunication in case of his refusal. Henry, who knew that an excommunication so agreeable to the sense of the people could not fail of producing the most dangerous effects, was obliged to submit: foreigners were banished: the natives were restored to their place in council [t]: the primate, who was a man of prudence, and who took care to execute the laws, and observe the charter of liberties, bore the chief sway in the government.
[MN 1236. Jan.] But the English in vain flattered themselves that they should be long free from the dominion of foreigners. [MN King's partiality to foreigners.] The king having married Eleanor, daughter of the Count of Provence [u], was surrounded by a great number of strangers from that country, whom he caressed with the fondest affection, and enriched by an imprudent generosity [w]. The Bishop of Valence, a prelate of the house of Savoy, and maternal uncle to the queen, was his chief minister, and employed every art to amass wealth for himself and his relations. Peter of Savoy, a brother of the same family, was invested in the honour of Richmond, and received the rich wardship of Earl Warrenne: Boniface of Savoy was promoted to the see of Canterbury. Many young ladies were invited over from Provence, and married to the chief noblemen in England, who were the king's wards [x]. And as the source of Henry's bounty began to fail, his Savoyard ministry applied to Rome, and obtained a bull, permitting him to resume all past grants; absolving him from the oath which he had taken to maintain them; even enjoining him to make such a resumption, and representing those grants as invalid, on account of the prejudice which ensued from them to the Roman pontiff, in whom the superiority of the kingdom was vested [y]. The opposition made to the intended resumption prevented it from taking place; but the nation saw the indignities to which the king was willing to submit, in order to gratify the avidity of his foreign favourites. About the same time he published in England the sentence of excommunication pronounced against the Emperor Frederic, his brother-in-law [z]; and said, in excuse, that, being the pope's vassal, he was obliged by his allegiance to obey all the commands of his holiness. In this weak reign, when any neighbouring potentate insulted the king's dominions, instead of taking revenge for the injury, he complained to the pope as his superior lord, and begged him to give protection to his vassal [a].
[MN 1236. Grievances.]
The resentment of the English barons rose high at the preference given to foreigners; but no remonstrance or complaint could ever prevail on the king to abandon them, or even to moderate his attachment towards them. After the Provencals and Savoyards might have been supposed pretty well satiated with the dignities and riches which they had acquired, a new set of hungry foreigners were invited over, and shared among them those favours, which the king ought in policy to have conferred on the English nobility, by whom his government could have been supported and defended. His mother, Isabella, who had been unjustly taken by the late king from the Count de la Marche, to whom she was betrothed, was no sooner mistress of herself, by the death of her husband, than she married that nobleman [b]; [MN 1247.] and she had borne him four sons, Guy, William, Geoffrey, and Aymer, whom she sent over to England, in order to pay a visit to their brother. The good-natured and affectionate disposition of Henry was moved at the sight of such near relations; and he considered neither his own circumstances, nor the inclinations of his people, in the honours and riches which he conferred upon them [c]. Complaints rose as high against the credit of the Gascon, as ever they had done against that of the Poictevin and of the Savoyard favourites; and to a nation prejudiced against them, all their measures appeared exceptionable and criminal. Violations of the great charter were frequently mentioned; and it is indeed more than probable that foreigners, ignorant of the laws, and relying on the boundless affections of a weak prince, would, in an age when a regular administration was not any where known, pay more attention to their present interest than to the liberties of the people. It is reported that the Poictevins and other strangers, when the laws were at any time appealed to, in opposition to their oppressions, scrupled not to reply, WHAT DID THE ENGLISH LAWS SIGNIFY TO THEM? THEY MINDED THEM NOT. And as words are often more offensive than actions, this open contempt of the English tended much to aggravate the general discontent, and made every act of violence committed by the foreigners appear not only an injury but an affront to them [d].
Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 335.]
I reckon not among the violations of the great charter some arbitrary exertions of prerogative, to which Henry's necessities pushed him, and which, without producing any discontent, were uniformly continued by all his successors till the last century. As the Parliament often refused him supplies, and that in a manner somewhat rude and indecent [e], he obliged his opulent subjects, particularly the citizens of London, to grant him loans of money; and it is natural to imagine, that the same want of economy which reduced him to the necessity of borrowing, would prevent him from being very punctual in the repayment [f]. He demanded benevolences, or pretended voluntary contributions, from his nobility and prelates [g]. He was the first king of England since the Conquest that could fairly be said to lie under the restraint of law; and he was also the first that practised the dispensing power, and employed the clause of NON OBSTANTE in his grants and patents. When objections were made to this novelty, he replied, that the pope exercised that authority; and why might not he imitate the example? But the abuse which the pope made of his dispensing power, in violating the canons of general councils, in invading the privileges and customs of all particular churches, and in usurping on the rights of patrons, was more likely to excite the jealousy of the people, than to reconcile them to a similar practice in their civil government. Roger de Thurkesby, one of the king's justices, was so displeased with the precedent, that he exclaimed, ALAS! WHAT TIMES ARE WE FALLEN INTO! BEHOLD, THE CIVIL COURT IS CORRUPTED IN IMITATION OF THE ECCLESIASTICAL, AND THE RIVER IS POISONED FROM THE FOUNTAIN.
The king's partiality and profuse bounty to his foreign relations, and to their friends and favourites, would have appeared more tolerable to the English, had any thing been done meanwhile for the honour of the nation; or had Henry's enterprises in foreign countries been attended with any success or glory to himself or to the public: at least, such military talents in the king would have served to keep his barons in awe, and have given weight and authority to his government. But though he declared war against Lewis IX. in 1242, and made an expedition into Guienne, upon the invitation of his father-in-law, the Count de la Marche, who promised to join him with all his forces, he was unsuccessful in his attempts against that great monarch, was worsted at Taillebourg, was deserted by his allies, lost what remained to him of Poictou, and was obliged to return, with loss of honour, into England [h]. The Gascon nobility were attached to the English government, because the distance of their sovereign allowed them to remain in a state of almost total independence; [MN 1253.] and they claimed, some time after, Henry's protection against an invasion, which the King of Castile made upon that territory. Henry returned into Guienne, and was more successful in this expedition; but he thereby involved himself and his nobility in an enormous debt, which both increased their discontents, and exposed him to greater danger from their enterprises [i].
Want of economy, and an ill-judged liberality, were Henry's great defects; and his debts, even before this expedition, had become so troublesome, that he sold all his plate and jewels, in order to discharge them. When this expedient was first proposed to him, he asked where he should find purchasers? It was replied, the citizens of London. ON MY WORD, said he, IF THE TREASURY OF AUGUSTUS WERE BROUGHT FOR SALE, THE CITIZENS ARE ABLE TO BE THE PURCHASERS: THESE CLOWNS, WHO ASSUME TO THEMSELVES THE NAME OF BARONS, ABOUND IN EVERY THING, WHILE WE ARE REDUCED TO NECESSITIES [k]. And he was thenceforth observed to be more forward and greedy in his exactions upon the citizens [l].
648.]
[MN Ecclesiastical grievances.]
But the grievances, which the English during this reign had reason to complain of in the civil government, seem to have been still less burdensome than those which they suffered from the usurpations and exactions of the court of Rome. [MN 1253.] On the death of Langton in 1228, the monks of Christ-church elected Walter de Hemesham, one of their own body, for his successor: but as Henry refused to confirm the election, the pope, at his desire, annulled it [m]; and immediately appointed Richard, Chancellor of Lincoln, for archbishop, without waiting for a new election. On the death of Richard in 1231, the monks elected Ralph de Neville, Bishop of Chichester; and though Henry was much pleased with the election, the pope, who thought that prelate too much attached to the crown, assumed the power of annulling his election [n]. He rejected two clergymen more, whom the monks had successively chosen; and he at last told them, that, if they would elect Edmond, treasurer of the church of Salisbury, he would confirm their choice; and his nomination was complied with. The pope had the prudence to appoint both times very worthy primates; but men could not forbear observing his intention of thus drawing gradually to himself the right of bestowing that important dignity.
The avarice, however, more than the ambition, of the see of Rome, seems to have been in this age the ground of general complaint. The papal ministers, finding a vast stock of power amassed by their predecessors, were desirous of turning it to immediate profit which they enjoyed at home, rather than of enlarging their authority in distant countries, where they never intended to reside. Every thing was become venal in the Romish tribunals; simony was openly practised; no favours, and even no justice, could be obtained without a bribe; the highest bidder was sure to have the preference, without regard either to the merits of the person or of the cause; and besides the usual perversions of right in the decision of controversies, the pope openly assumed an absolute and uncontrolled authority of setting aside, by the plenitude of his apostolic power, all particular rules, and all privileges of patrons, churches, and convents. On pretence of remedying these abuses, Pope Honorius, in 1226, complaining of the poverty of his see as the source of all grievances, demanded from every cathedral two of the best prebends, and from every convent two monks' portions, to be set apart as a perpetual and settled revenue of the papal crown: but all men being sensible that the revenue would continue for ever, the abuses immediately return, his demand was unanimously rejected. About three years after, the pope demanded and obtained the tenth of all ecclesiastical revenues, which he levied in a very oppressive manner; requiring payment before the clergy had drawn their rents or tithes, and sending about usurers, who advanced them the money at exorbitant interest. In the year 1240, Otho, the legate, having in vain attempted the clergy in a body, obtained separately, by intrigues and menaces, large sums from the prelates and convents, and on his departure is said to have carried more money out of the kingdom than he left in it. This experiment was renewed four years after with success by Martin the nuncio, who brought from Rome powers of suspending and excommunicating all clergymen that refused to comply with his demands. The king, who relied on the pope for the support of his tottering authority, never failed to countenance those exactions.
Meanwhile, all the chief benefices of the kingdom were conferred on Italians; great numbers of that nation were sent over at one time to be provided for; non-residence and pluralities were carried to an enormous height; Mansel, the king's chaplain, is computed to have held at once seven hundred ecclesiastical livings; and the abuses became so evident as to be palpable to the blindness of superstition itself.
The people, entering into associations, rose against the Italian clergy; pillaged their barns; wasted their lands; insulted the persons of such of them as they found in the kingdom [o]; and when the justices made inquiry into the authors of this disorder, the guilt was found to involve so many, and those of such high rank, that it passed unpunished. At last, when Innocent IV., in 1245, called a general council at Lyons, in order to excommunicate the Emperor Frederic, the king and nobility sent over agents to complain before the council of the rapacity of the Romish church. They represented, among many other grievances, that the benefices of the Italian clergy in England had been estimated, and were found to amount to sixty thousand marks [p] a year, a sum which exceeded the annual revenue of the crown [q]. They obtained only an evasive answer from the pope; but as mention had been made before the council of the feudal subjection of England to the see of Rome, the English agents, at whose head was Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, exclaimed against the pretension, and insisted that King John had no right, without the consent of his barons, to subject the kingdom to so ignominious a servitude [r]. The popes, indeed, afraid of carrying matters too far against England, seem thenceforth to have little insisted on that pretension.
bull in Rymer, vol. i. p. 471, says only fifty thousand marks a year.
[q] M. Paris, p. 451. The customs were part of Henry's revenue, and amounted to six thousand pounds a year: they were at first small sums paid by the merchants for the use of the king's warehouses, measures, weights, &c. See Gilbert's History of the Exch. p. 214. [r] M.
Paris, p. 460.]
This check, received at the council of Lyons, was not able to stop the court of Rome in its rapacity; Innocent exacted the revenues of all vacant benefices, the twentieth of all ecclesiastical revenues without exception; the third of such as exceeded a hundred marks a year, and the half of such as were possessed by non-residents [s]. He claimed the goods of all intestate clergymen [t]; he pretended a title to inherit all money gotten by usury; he levied benevolences upon the people; and when the king, contrary to his usual practice, prohibited these exactions, he threatened to pronounce against him the same censures which he had emitted against the Emperor Frederic [u].
[u] Ibid. p. 476.]
[MN 1255.] But the most oppressive expedient employed by the pope was the embarking of Henry in a project for the conquest of Naples or Sicily on this side the Fare, as it was called; an enterprise, which threw much dishonour on the king, and involved him, during some years, in great trouble and expense. The Romish church, taking advantage of favourable incidents, had reduced the kingdom of Sicily to the same state of feudal vassalage which she pretended to extend over England, and which, by reason of the distance, as well as high spirit of this latter kingdom, she was not able to maintain. After the death of the Emperor Frederic II., the succession of Sicily devolved to Conradine, grandson of that monarch; and Mainfroy, his natural son, under pretence of governing the kingdom during the minority of the prince, had formed a scheme of establishing his own authority. Pope Innocent, who had carried on violent war against the Emperor Frederic, and had endeavoured to dispossess him of his Italian dominions, still continued hostilities against his grandson; but being disappointed in all his schemes by the activity and artifices of Mainfroy, he found that his own force alone was not sufficient to bring to a happy issue so great an enterprise. He pretended to dispose of the Sicilian crown, both as superior lord of that particular kingdom, and as vicar of Christ, to whom all kingdoms of the earth were subjected; and he made a tender of it to Richard, Earl of Cornwall, whose immense riches, he flattered himself, would be able to support the military operations against Mainfroy. As Richard had the prudence to refuse the present [w], he applied to the king, whose levity and thoughtless disposition gave Innocent more hopes of success; and he offered him the crown of Sicily for his second son, Edmond [x]. Henry, allured by so magnificent a present, without reflecting on the consequences, without consulting either with his brother or the Parliament, accepted of the insidious proposal; and gave the pope unlimited credit to expend whatever sums he thought necessary for completing the conquest of Sicily. Innocent, who was engaged by his own interests to wage war with Mainfroy, was glad to carry on his enterprises at the expense of his ally: Alexander IV., who succeeded him in the papal throne, continued the same policy; and Henry was surprised to find himself on a sudden involved in an immense debt, which he had never been consulted in contracting. The sum already amounted to one hundred and thirty-five thousand five hundred and forty-one marks, besides interest [y]; and he had the prospect, if he answered this demand, of being soon loaded with more exorbitant expenses; if he refused it, of both incurring the pope's displeasure, and losing the crown of Sicily, which he hoped soon to have the glory of fixing on the head of his son.
p. 319.]
He applied to the Parliament for supplies; and that he might be sure not to meet with opposition, he sent no writs to the more refractory barons; but even those who were summoned, sensible of the ridiculous cheat imposed by the pope, determined not to lavish their money on such chimerical projects; and making a pretext of the absence of their brethren, they refused to take the king's demands into consideration [z]. In this extremity the clergy were his only resource; and as both their temporal and spiritual sovereign concurred in loading them, they were ill able to defend themselves against this united authority.
The pope published a crusade for the conquest of Sicily; and required every one, who had taken the cross against the infidels, or had vowed to advance money for that service, to support the war against Mainfroy, a more terrible enemy, as he pretended, to the Christian faith than any Saracen [a]. He levied a tenth on all ecclesiastical benefices in England for three years; and gave orders to excommunicate all bishops who made not punctual payment. He granted to the king the goods of intestate clergymen; the revenues of vacant benefices; the revenues of all non-residents [b]. But these taxations, being levied by some rule, were deemed less grievous than another imposition, which arose from the suggestion of the Bishop of Hereford, and which might have opened the door to endless and intolerable abuses.
598.]
This prelate, who resided at the court of Rome, by a deputation from the English church, drew bills of different values, but amounting on the whole to one hundred and fifty thousand five hundred and forty marks, on all the bishops and abbots of the kingdom; and granted these bills to Italian merchants, who, it was pretended, had advanced money for the service of the war against Mainfroy [c]. As there was no likelihood of the English prelates submitting, without compulsion, to such an extraordinary demand, Rustand, the legate, was charged with the commission of employing authority to that purpose; and he summoned an assembly of the bishops and abbots, whom he acquainted with the pleasure of the pope and of the king. Great were the surprise and indignation of the assembly. The Bishop of Worcester exclaimed, that he would lose his life rather than comply: the Bishop of London said, that the pope and king were more powerful than he; but if his mitre were taken off his head, he would clap on a helmet in its place [d].
The legate was no less violent on the other hand; and he told the assembly, in plain terms, that all ecclesiastical benefices were the property of the pope, and he might dispose of them, either in whole or in part, as he saw proper [e]. In the end, the bishops and abbots, being threatened with excommunication, which made all the revenues fall into the king's hands, were obliged to submit to the exaction; and the only mitigation which the legate allowed them was, that the tenths, already granted, should be accepted as a partial payment of the bills. But the money was still insufficient for the pope's purpose: the conquest of Sicily was as remote as ever: the demands which came from Rome were endless: Pope Alexander became so urgent a creditor, that he sent over a legate to England, threatening the kingdom with an interdict, and the king with excommunication, if the arrears, which he pretended to be due to him, were not instantly remitted [f]. And at last Henry, sensible of the cheat, began to think of breaking off the agreement, and of resigning into the pope's hands that crown, which it was not intended by Alexander, that he or his family should ever enjoy [g].
[MN Earl of Cornwall elected King of the Romans.]
The Earl of Cornwall had now reason to value himself on his foresight, in refusing the fraudulent bargain with Rome, and in preferring the solid honours of an opulent and powerful prince of the blood of England, to the empty and precarious glory of a foreign dignity. But he had not always firmness sufficient to adhere to this resolution: his vanity and ambition prevailed at last over his prudence and his avarice; and he was engaged in an enterprise no less extensive and vexatious than that of his brother, and not attended with much greater probability of success. The immense opulence of Richard having made the German princes cast their eye on him as a candidate for the empire, he was tempted to expend vast sums of money on his election; and he succeeded so far as to be chosen King of the Romans, which seemed to render his succession infallible to the imperial throne. He went over to Germany, and carried out of the kingdom no less a sum than seven hundred thousand marks, if we may credit the account given by some ancient authors [h], which is probably much exaggerated [i].
His money, while it lasted, procured him friends and partisans; but it was soon drained from him by the avidity of the German princes; and having no personal or family connexions in that country, and no solid foundation of power, he found at last that he had lavished away the frugality of a whole life in order to procure a splendid title; and that his absence from England, joined to the weakness of his brother's government, gave reins to the factious and turbulent dispositions of the English barons, and involved his own country and family in great calamities.
[FN [h] M. Paris, p. 638. The same author, a few pages before, makes Richard's treasures amount to little more than half the sum, p. 634.
The king's dissipations and expenses, throughout his whole reign, according to the same author, had amounted only to about nine hundred and forty thousand marks, p. 638. [i] The sums mentioned by ancient authors, who were almost all monks, are often improbable, and never consistent. But we know, from an infallible authority, the public remonstrance to the council of Lyons, that the king's revenues were below sixty thousand marks a year: his brother, therefore, could never have been master of seven hundred thousand marks; especially as he did not sell his estates in England, as we learn from the same author: and we hear afterwards of his ordering all his woods to be cut, in order to satisfy the rapacity of the German princes. His son succeeded to the earldom of Cornwall, and his other revenues.]
[MN Discontents of the barons.]
The successful revolt of the nobility from King John, and their imposing on him and his successors limitations of their royal power, had made them feel their own weight and importance, had set a dangerous precedent of resistance, and being followed by a long minority, had impoverished as well as weakened that crown, which they were at last induced, from the fear of worse consequences, to replace on the head of young Henry. In the king's situation, either great abilities and vigour were requisite to overawe the barons, or great caution and reserve to give them no pretence for complaints; and it must be confessed that this prince was possessed of neither of these talents. He had not prudence to choose right measures; he wanted even that constancy, which sometimes gives weight to wrong ones; he was entirely devoted to his favourites, who were always foreigners; he lavished on them, without discretion, his diminished revenue; and finding that his barons indulged their disposition towards tyranny, and observed not to their own vassals the same rules which they had imposed on the crown, he was apt, in his administration, to neglect all the salutary articles of the great charter, which he remarked to be so little regarded by his nobility. This conduct had extremely lessened his authority in the kingdom; had multiplied complaints against him; and had frequently exposed him to affronts, and even to dangerous attempts upon his prerogative. In the year 1244, when he desired a supply from Parliament, the barons, complaining of the frequent breaches of the great charter, and of the many fruitless applications which they had formerly made for the redress of this and other grievances, demanded, in return, that he should give them the nomination of the great justiciary and of the chancellor, to whose hands chiefly the administration of justice was committed; and if we may credit the historian [k], they had formed the plan of other limitations, as well as of associations to maintain them, which would have reduced the king to be an absolute cipher; and have held the crown in perpetual pupilage and dependence. The king, to satisfy them, would agree to nothing but a renewal of the charter, and a general permission to excommunicate all the violaters of it; and he received no supply, except a scutage of twenty shillings on each knight's fee, for the marriage of his eldest daughter to the King of Scotland; a burden which was expressly annexed to their feudal tenures.
Four years after, in a full Parliament, when Henry demanded a new supply, he was openly reproached with a breach of his word, and the frequent violations of the charter. He was asked, whether he did not blush to desire any aid from his people, whom he professedly hated and despised, to whom, on all occasions, he preferred aliens and foreigners, and who groaned under the oppressions which he either permitted or exercised over them. He was told that, besides disparaging his nobility, by forcing them to contract unequal and mean marriages with strangers, no rank of men was so low as to escape vexatious from him or his ministers; that even the victuals consumed in his household, the clothes which himself and his servants wore, still more the wine which they used, were all taken by violence from the lawful owners, and no compensation was ever made them for the injury; that foreign merchants, to the great prejudice and infamy of the kingdom, shunned the English harbours, as if they were possessed by pirates, and the commerce with all nations was thus cut off by these acts of violence; that loss was added to loss, and injury to injury, while the merchants, who had been despoiled of their goods, were also obliged to carry them at their own charge to whatever place the king was pleased to appoint them; that even the poor fishermen on the coast could not escape his oppressions and those of his courtiers; and finding that they had not full liberty to dispose of their commodities in the English market, were frequently constrained to carry them to foreign ports, and to hazard all the perils of the ocean, rather than those which awaited them from his oppressive emissaries; and that his very religion was a ground of complaint to his subjects, while they observed, that the waxen tapers and splendid silks, employed in so many useless processions, were the spoils which he had forcibly ravished from the true owners [l]. Throughout this remonstrance, in which the complaints, derived from an abuse of the ancient right of purveyance, may be supposed to be somewhat exaggerated, there appears a strange mixture of regal tyranny in the practices which gave rise to it, and of aristocratical liberty, or rather licentiousness, in the expressions employed by the Parliament.
But a mixture of this kind is observable in all the ancient feudal governments; and both of them proved equally hurtful to the people.
As the king, in answer to their remonstrance, gave the Parliament only good words and fair promises, attended with the most humble submissions, which they had often found deceitful, he obtained at that time no supply; and therefore, in the year 1253, when he found himself again under the necessity of applying to Parliament, he had provided a new pretence, which he deemed infallible, and taking the vow of a crusade, he demanded their assistance in that pious enterprise [m].
The Parliament, however, for some time hesitated to comply; and the