Henry III (1 October 1207 – 16 November 1272) was
the son and successor of
John as
King of England, reigning for
fifty-six years from 1216 to his death. His contemporaries knew him
as
Henry of Winchester. He was the first child
king in England since the reign of
Æthelred the Unready.
England prospered
during his reign and his greatest monument is Westminster
, which he made the seat of his government and where
he expanded the abbey as a shrine to Edward the Confessor.
He assumed the crown under the
regency of the
popular
William Marshal, but the
England he inherited had undergone several drastic changes in the
reign of his father. He spent much of his reign fighting the barons
over
Magna Carta and the royal rights,
and was eventually forced to call the first "
parliament" in 1264.
He was also
unsuccessful on the Continent, where he endeavoured to re-establish
English control over Normandy, Anjou
, and
Aquitaine
.
Coronation
Henry III
was born in 1207 at Winchester Castle
. He was the son of King John and
Isabella of Angoulême. The
coronation was a simple affair, attended by only a handful of
noblemen and three bishops.
In the absence of a crown a simple golden
band was placed on the young boy's head, not by the Archbishop of Canterbury (who was
at this time supporting Prince
Louis of France
, the
newly-proclaimed king of France
) but rather
by the Bishop of
Gloucester. In 1220, a second coronation was ordered by
Pope Honorius III who did not
consider that the first had been carried out in accordance with
church rites.
This occurred on 17 May 1220 in Westminster
Abbey
.
Under John's rule, the
barons had supported an
invasion by Prince Louis because
they disliked the way that John had ruled the country. However,
they quickly saw that the young prince was a safer option. Henry's
regents immediately declared their intention
to rule by
Magna Carta, which they
proceeded to do during Henry’s minority. Magna Carta was reissued
in 1217 as a sign of goodwill to the barons and the country was
ruled by regents until 1227.
Wars and rebellions
In 1244,
when the Scots threatened to invade England, King Henry III visited
York
Castle
and ordered it rebuilt in stone. The work
commenced in 1245, and took some 20 to 25 years to complete. The
builders crowned the existing moat with a stone keep, known as the
King's Tower.
Henry's reign came to be marked by civil strife as the English
barons, led by
Simon de Montfort,
demanded more say in the running of the kingdom. French-born de
Montfort had originally been one of the foreign upstarts so loathed
by many as Henry's foreign counsellors. Henry, in an outburst of
anger, accused Simon of seducing his sister and forcing him to give
her to Simon to avoid a scandal. When confronted by the Barons
about the secret marriage that Henry had allowed to happen, a feud
developed between the two.
Their relationship reached a crisis in the
1250s when de Montfort was brought up on spurious charges for
actions he took as lieutenant of Gascony
, the last
remaining Plantagenet land across the English Channel
. He was acquitted by the
Peers of the realm, much to the King's
displeasure.
Henry also became embroiled in funding a war in
Sicily on behalf of the
Pope in return for a title for his second
son
Edmund,
a state of affairs that made many barons fearful that Henry was
following in the footsteps of his father,
King John, and needed to be kept in check,
too. De Montfort became leader of those who wanted to reassert
Magna Carta and force the king to
surrender more power to the baronial council. In 1258, seven
leading barons forced Henry to agree to the
Provisions of Oxford, which effectively
abolished the absolutist
Anglo-Norman
monarchy, giving power to a council of fifteen barons to deal with
the business of government and providing for a thrice-yearly
meeting of
parliament to
monitor their performance. Henry was forced to take part in the
swearing of a collective oath to the
Provisions of Oxford.
In the following years, those supporting de Montfort and those
supporting the king grew more and more polarised. Henry obtained a
papal bull in 1262 exempting him from his oath and both sides began
to raise armies. The Royalists were led by
Prince Edward, Henry's eldest son. Civil
war, known as the
Second Barons'
War, followed.
The
charismatic de Montfort and his forces had captured most of
southeastern England by 1263, and at the Battle of Lewes
on 14 May 1264, Henry was defeated and taken
prisoner by de Montfort's army. While Henry was reduced to
being a figurehead king, de Montfort broadened representation to
include each county of England and many important towns—that is, to
groups beyond the nobility. Henry and Edward continued under house
arrest. The short period that followed was the closest England was
to come to complete abolition of the
monarchy until the
Commonwealth period of 1649–1660 and
many of the barons who had initially supported de Montfort began to
suspect that he had gone too far with his reforming zeal.

The tomb of King Henry III in
Westminster Abbey, London
But only
fifteen months later Prince Edward had escaped captivity (having
been freed by his cousin Roger Mortimer) to lead the royalists into
battle again and he turned the tables on de Montfort at the
Battle of
Evesham
in 1265. Following this victory, savage
retribution was exacted on the rebels.
Death
Henry's reign ended when he died in 1272, after which he was
succeeded by his son,
Edward I.
His body
was laid, temporarily, in the tomb of Edward the Confessor while
his own sarcophagus was constructed in Westminster Abbey
.
Attitudes and beliefs during his reign
As Henry reached maturity he was keen to restore royal authority,
looking towards the autocratic model of the
French monarchy. Henry married
Eleanor of Provence and he promoted many
of his French relatives to higher positions of power and wealth.
For instance, one
Poitevin,
Peter des Riveaux, held the offices of
Treasurer of the
Household, Keeper of the King's Wardrobe,
Lord Privy Seal, and the
sheriffdoms of twenty-one English counties
simultaneously. Henry's tendency to govern for long periods with no
publicly-appointed ministers who could be held accountable for
their actions and decisions did not make matters any easier. Many
English barons came to see his method of governing as
foreign.
Henry was much taken with the cult of the
Anglo-Saxon saint king Edward the Confessor who had been
canonised in 1161. After learning that St Edward dressed in an
austere manner, Henry took to doing the same and wearing only the
simplest of
robes. He had a
mural of the saint painted in his
bedchamber for inspiration before and after sleep
and even named his eldest son Edward.
Henry designated
Westminster
, where St Edward had founded the abbey, as the
fixed seat of power in England and Westminster Hall duly became the greatest
ceremonial space of the kingdom, where the council of nobles also
met. Henry appointed French architects from
Rheims
to renovate
Westminster
Abbey
in the Gothic
style. Work began, at great expense, in 1245. The
centrepiece of Henry's renovated abbey was a shrine to Edward the
Confessor. It was finished in 1269 and the saint's relics were then
installed.
Henry was known for his anti-Jewish decrees, such as a decree
compelling Jews to wear a special "
badge
of shame" in the form of the Two Tablets.Henry was extremely
pious and his journeys were often delayed by his insistence on
hearing
Mass several times a day. He took so
long to arrive for a visit to the French court that his
brother-in-law, King
Louis IX of
France, banned priests from Henry's route. On one occasion, as
related by
Roger of Wendover, when
King Henry met with papal prelates, he said, "
If [the prelates]
knew how much I, in my reverence of God, am afraid of them and how
unwilling I am to offend them, they would trample on me as on an
old and worn-out shoe."
Criticisms
Henry's advancement of foreign
favourites,
notably his wife's Savoyard uncles and his own
Lusignan half-siblings, was unpopular with his
subjects and barons. He was also extravagant and avaricious; when
his first child,
Prince Edward,
was born, Henry demanded that Londoners bring him rich gifts to
celebrate. He even sent back gifts that did not please him.
Matthew Paris reports that some said,
"
God gave us this child, but the king sells him to
us."

Henry III lands in Aquitaine, from a
later (15th century) illumination.
(Bibliothèque Nationale, MS fr.
Appearance
According to
Nicholas Trevet, Henry
was a thickset man of medium height with a narrow forehead and a
drooping left eyelid (inherited by his son,
Edward I).
Marriage and children
Married
on 14 January 1236, Canterbury Cathedral
, Canterbury
, Kent
, to Eleanor of Provence, with at least five
children born:
- Edward I (b. 17 June 1239 -
d. 8 July 1307)
- Margaret (b. 29 September
1240 - d. 26 February 1275), married King Alexander III of Scotland
- Beatrice (b. 25 June 1242 -
d. 24 March 1275), married to John II, Duke of Brittany
- Edmund (16 January 1245 - d. 5
June 1296)
- Katharine (b. 25 November 1253 - d. 3 May 1257), deafness was
discovered at age 2. [7605]
There is reason to doubt the existence of several attributed
children of Henry and Eleanor.
- Richard (b. after 1247 - d. before 1256),
- John (b. after 1250 - d. before 1256), and
- Henry (b. after 1253 - d. young)
are known only from a 14th century addition made to a manuscript of
Flores historiarum, and
are nowhere contemporaneously recorded.
- William (b. and d. ca. 1258) is an error for the nephew of
Henry's half-brother, William de
Valence.
Another daughter, Matilda, is found only in the Hayles abbey
chronicle, alongside such other fictitious children as a son named
William for King
John, and a bastard
son named John for King
Edward
I. Matilda's existence is doubtful, at best. For further
details, see Margaret Howell,
The Children of King Henry III
and Eleanor of Provence (1992).
Personal details
- His Royal Motto was qui non dat quod habet non accipit ille
quod optat (He who does not give what he has, does not receive
what he wants).
- His
favourite wine was made with the Loire Valley
red wine grape Pineau
d'Aunis which Henry first introduced to England in the
thirteenth century.
- He
built a Royal Palace in the town of Cippenham
, Slough
, Buckinghamshire named "Cippenham
Moat
".
- In 1266, Henry III of England granted the Lübeck and Hamburg
Hansa a charter for operations in England, which contributed to the
emergence of the Hanseatic
League.
Fictional portrayals
In
The Divine Comedy Dante
sees Henry ("the king of simple life") sitting outside the gates of
Purgatory with other contemporary European
rulers.
Henry is a prominent character in
Sharon
Penman's
historical novel
Falls the Shadow; his
portrayal is very close to most historical descriptions of him as
weak and vacillating.
Henry has been portrayed on screen as a child by
Dora Senior in the silent short
King
John (1899), a version of John's death scene from
Shakespeare's
King John, and by
Rusty Livingstone in the
BBC Shakespeare The Life and Death of
King John (1984).
Ancestors
See also
References
- J. Robinson Vines Grapes & Wines pg 199 Mitchell
Beazley 1986 ISBN 1-85732-999-6
External links