On June 11, 1258 the university town of Oxford was
filled with armed men. The barons, convening with the high clergy of England to
arbitrate their grievances with King Henry III, had brought their knights with
them. King Henry was permitting the lord to raise their knight for war against
the Welsh. The date for commencement of the war was so close to that of the
Oxford meeting that Henry unwittingly had raised the army of England not only
to be ready for war in Wales -- but to be available to enforce the outcome of
the rebellious meeting.
King Henry excused himself from attending. Oxford already
had a reputation for being a risky place for kings. To preserve the chastity of
the Oxford abbess Friswitha, God had broken the neck of the Mercian King
Athelbald. So superstitious monarchs never set foot in Oxford. Henry stayed
away from Oxford perhaps from mystical dread, more likely from good sense.
Behind the safe and not too distant walls of Windsor castle he awaited news of
the meeting.
Of course there were representatives of the king:
half the members of the Oxford committee of arbitration were of Henry’s
choosing: his own half-brothers of Lusignan, William and Guy, notorious bullies
and flouters of the law but dearly loved by Henry; the Queen’s uncles Peter of
Savoy whom Henry had elevated to Earl of Richmond and was noted for graft, and
young Boniface whom Henry had forced upon the monks of Canterbury as their Archbishop
despite his ignorance of Latin and the liturgy; Henry of Alemaine the King’s
nephew, the most decent member of the royal family; the Bishop of London and
the Abbot of Westminster, both deeply beholding to Henry for the building of
Westminster Abbey church – that magnificent structure where kings and queens
are crowned but which drained off the money Henry should have used for England’s
greater needs; the earls of Warwick and Surrey who were notably biddable; and
three royal clerks in Henry’s employ.
On the lords’ side were the members of the League
that had been formed to resist Henry’s abominated taxes: the leader of the League
Richard de Clare Earl of Gloucester; Roger Bigod Earl of Norfolk and Marshal of
England; Hugh Bigod, his brother; Simon de Montfort Earl of Leicester, the King’s
brother-in-law and military strategist; John Fitzgeoffrey, England’s Justiciar
in Ireland: and several new but hearty partisans: Humphrey de Bohun Earl of
Hereford, four knights and the Bishop of Worcester.
That a committee comprised of these two sets of people
could have come to any consensus is astonishing. The King’s relatives and the
lords of the League hated each other and had been enemies for decades. Yet this
committee of arbitration, the general meeting of all the lords and clergy and
the many committees they spawned created a constitution that established
elective government by the common people.
This was five hundred years before
the Enlightenment and the American and French revolutions would place such an
idea in a setting of acceptable philosophy.
How did it happen? By chance, it would seem.
The committee of arbitration got off to a predictably
difficult start. At first the King’s side predominated with the choosing of one
of Henry’s clerks to continue in his position of Chancellor, keeper of the
royal seals that make commands official.
It was the general meeting that apparently opened
the way to change. The assembled lords and clergy were asked what was most
troublesome in Henry’s government. Instead of citing outrageous taxes – the issue
that caused the meeting – the chief complaint concerned the royal sheriffs.
Sheriffs had the duty of summoning courts to hear
cases of law. The local lord or abbot was required to preside – and if he
failed he was fined, with the money going to the sheriff. Most lords and abbots
held numerous fiefs scattered over several shires. The sheriffs had found a
handy source of profit in summoning courts so frequently that it was impossible
for the lord or abbot to attend. The result was not only wealth to the
sheriffs, but the failure of the courts to meet, and cases going unresolved.
The Oxford meeting recommended to King Henry that
the sheriffs be replaced, and drew up a list of suggested candidates.
With the law courts failing to meet, judgments weren’t
given and fines, which went to the King, weren’t collected. Here was a fund-raising
means that everybody liked. Henry’s half-brothers and Peter of Savoy rushed
this happy petition to Windsor and remained there for a day or so as Henry
reviewed the list, sent orders for the recall of all the royal sheriffs and
their replacement by the candidates on the list.
This welcome result from Oxford’s general meeting
was quickly followed by another. At times of emergency such as war or famine, the
royal bailiffs were empowered to seize goods remaining unsold in market stalls at
the end of the day. But the bailiffs were making a regular practice of seizing
all left over goods. Their families set up sales booths of their own to sell
the goods at discount – stifling legitimate sales and keeping the 100% profits
to themselves.
Henry gleefully replaced his royal bailiffs with
those proposed by the meeting’s list.
Soon all the royal sheriffs in England were replaced
with men who owed their new positions to the Oxford meeting and its partisans.
And the new royal bailiffs too now were beholding to Oxford.
But much more was to result from the King’s members
of the committee of arbitration going off with their good news to Windsor. In
their absence the lords’ faction predominated. New committees were elected in
which the King’s friends notably were not included: a Committee for the King’s
Aid to deal with the taxes; a committee for England’s defense, and a Council to
be with the King always to advise and oversee his actions.
And a development in the general meeting was truly revolutionary.
It arose, innocently enough, out of the issue of the honesty of sheriffs. How could
it be guaranteed that the new sheriffs wouldn’t be tempted to corruptions just
like the old ones?
There already existed a system for choosing four knights
from each shire to escort taxes to London. It was decided to these men chosen
by election by the common free men of the shire; to empower them to do an audit
of the sheriffs and report their findings to the King and Court at a set place
and date three times a year; and also to report whatever problems had arisen in
the shire.
This seemed not a revolutionary step but a practical
one, providing a serviceable link between the monarch and the people for the
prompt communication of problems. But it dovetailed with the sixty-first clause
of Magna Carta which said that the King must redress any wrongs reported by
four knights to a committee of the lords who had won the great charter. If the
king failed, the lords were within their rights in raising all of England in
arms against him.
The clause, signed by King John at Runnymede, had
brought him unending civil war. But forty three years had elapsed since Runnymede.
The lords specified had died off and clause 61 had been removed from further issues
of the Charter.
But the League, with a copy of the original Magna Carta
of 1215 in hand, had reminded King Henry and the lords of this clause. Now,
with an excellent mechanism in place for reporting wrongs, the question was how
to force the King to give redress?
In the absence of Henry’s supporters, a committee of
lords and clergy was designed specifically to meet with the knights arriving
from the shires at their appointed times. Thus the modern Parliament was
fashioned with its two Houses: Lords, and representatives elected by the Commons.
With Magna Carta’s clause 61 to back it up, the King
was required to hear the complaints of his people and to redress those complaints
as Parliament and his Counsel (chosen by the lords) advised.
Kings had summoned meetings to consult with their
vassals from time immemorial. In England such meetings had occasionally even
been called “parliaments.” But the Parliament fashioned at Oxford and described
in the document titled The Provisions of Oxford was utterly different. It met
at a regularly appointed time and place; it included a body of representatives
chosen by the common people – and, most importantly, this Parliament was not merely an advisor. It had power to compel the King
to do as it required.
The Parliament created by the Provisions of Oxford
was the first true modern democracy.
Katherine Ashe is the author of the Montfort series, including Montfort the Revolutionary 1253 to 1260
http://www.amazon.com/Montfort-The-Revolutionary-1253-1260/dp/145284447X/ref=sr_1_14?ie=UTF8&qid=1395087698&sr=8-14&keywords=katherine+Ashe
book website: www.simon-de-montfort.com
personal website: www.katherineashe.com
http://www.amazon.com/Montfort-The-Revolutionary-1253-1260/dp/145284447X/ref=sr_1_14?ie=UTF8&qid=1395087698&sr=8-14&keywords=katherine+Ashe
book website: www.simon-de-montfort.com
personal website: www.katherineashe.com
