Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [297]
The leader of this movement was one of the strangest and most controversial figures in English history: Simon de Montfort.
The founder of the Mother of Parliaments was not English at all: he was French, from one of the most notable families in the Isle de France. Nor had he the slightest interest in democratic government. He was a magnate. Twenty years before he had caused a scandal by marrying Henry’s newly widowed sister when she had already been promised to a convent – according to the king, he had seduced her. And he was more concerned with the endless lawsuit to secure her dowry – which Henry had still not paid – than he ever was with the Parliament of England.
He did not even like the English: he openly despised them and agreed with the stern Grosseteste that the nation’s morals needed reforming, by compulsion if necessary. He was a strict military disciplinarian who despised Henry’s footling campaigns and told him so in pointed language which made the King of England wince. He was intellectual, tactless and high-handed: a European grand seigneur who saw that Henry did not know how to govern his kingdom and could not resist doing it for him.
But Montfort had energy; he had ability and charisma, and unlike poor Henry, he knew what he wanted. He crossed the sky of England’s history like a meteor.
During a few months in 1258 he overhauled the entire system of government. In the king’s name parliaments of barons and knights were to be called three times a year; the king’s sheriffs were to be local men who would be kept in check by serving only a year at a time; a massive programme of local reforms was begun. And all this, not because he was devoted to any principle, but because he saw that for the independent-minded folk in their northern island, this was the system which would work best.
In October 1258 a proclamation was read in Latin, French and English, in every shire court; and in the name of the king and the community of the realm, not only each baron and knight, but every free man in the kingdom had to swear an oath of loyalty to the new government.
On this occasion Peter Shockley was with Godefroi and his son and took the oath immediately after them.
“Now we’ll get some good government for our money,” Godefroi’s son told him with an encouraging grin.
“And Montfort? What’s he like?” the merchant asked. The elder Godefroi smiled.
“An arrogant bastard,” he murmured confidentially. “But he gets things done.”
The irony of the situation only appeared a little while afterwards when the pope changed his mind and decided to give Sicily to someone else. Perhaps no one in England, except Henry himself, was surprised. He had given his kingdom to Simon de Montfort and his council for nothing at all.
But the oath had been taken.
“The king must live by the Provisions now,” Godefroi declared. “It’s too late to go back. The issue’s settled.”
He was wrong. Greater forces, the currents that bore along and finally tore apart the elaborate society of the middle ages, were deep at work.
The events that followed in the next four years, like a complex ritual dance, were conducted according to the best traditions of a feudal society.
First it seemed that Henry’s son, aided by Simon de Montfort, would rebel and seize the throne. Then father and son were reconciled, and Henry appealed to the pope to declare that the hateful Provisions which bound him were invalid. The pope obliged and Montfort, disgusted, went into exile. Henry immediately reverted to his previous ways, filled his court with foreigners and ignored the magnates. Predictably the barons summoned Montfort again and rebelled. The situation changed almost monthly, the king’s party in the ascendant one month, the rebels humiliating him the next; it was near to civil war: but still no blood was shed.
Important though these great events were in the national context, they did not greatly disturb the peace of Sarum. The local magnates, men like Basset and the