Part II: The Provisions of Oxford: Parliament and Modern Democracy

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

Montfort, Parliament and Democracy: Part I: The League against the King

In the year 1258 King Henry III of England confessed to his lords and high clergy that he had pledged the Sovereignty of England as insurance for a debt – and he couldn’t pay. Pope Alexander IV had offered Henry the Crown of Sicily for his son Edmund if Henry would merely pay the expenses of a mercenary army to displace the heirs of Sicily, the sons of the Emperor Frederic II. 

The lords of England had expected they were being summoned to war against the Welsh who were marauding in the western shires in an attempt to take back what they considered their own. By custom and the dictates of the Magna Carta the king could require either military service or an extra tax. But not both at the same time. The lords, assembled in Henry’s royal hall at Westminster, flatly refused to pay.

The consequences could be dire. Pope Alexander could excommunicate Henry – but a previous Pope had excommunicated the Emperor Frederic who merely put on his crown and asked his courtiers if he looked at all changed. More effectively, the Pope could offer the Crown of England to anyone who would finance the necessary war to take it – just as he was doing with the Crown of Sicily, and England was a prize far more worthwhile.

Still the lords and clergy refused to come up with the money. Henry postponed the next convening and used the intervening time to threaten the lord individually in ways he knew each to be most vulnerable.

Happening to meet after their extortion sessions with Henry, six lords pledged themselves to an alliance, a League to resist the king. Comparing the abuses inflicted upon them, they swore to defend each other -- within the bounds of their oath of loyalty to the Crown.

These six men were the young rather hot headed Richard de Clare the Earl of Gloucester, Roger Bigod the Marshall of England, John Fitzgeoffrey the Justiciar of Ireland for the Crown, Peter of Savoy the Earl of Richmond and the queen’s uncle, Simon de Montfort the Earl of Leicester and the king’s brother-in-law and principal military strategist (who was frequently in the king’s ill graces) and Peter de Montfort a knight and Montfort’s cousin.

Peter of Savoy may well be looked upon as the spy in the group for King Henry almost at once knew of the pledge. The danger of their position was immediately apparent to the members of the League. There was just enough time before the general reconvening with the king for them to go to their home shires and return with their knights in arms for self-protection.  It was a move that was of course illegal and easily interpreted as treason.

But when the lords of the League returned to London, hedged round with their knights in full arms, they found that the common people of London were very much on their side. King Henry and his servitors had abused his subjects, common and noble alike, and commoners and lords alike looked upon the League as their defenders. 

Being aware of the power of public opinion, the League earls deliberately paraded with their knights through the streets of London, accepting cheers as heroes. From King Henry’s point of view this was the leading edge of civil war.

Nevertheless, his meeting with the lords and clergy was convened on the appointed day. The assembly gathered, but the lords of the League were nowhere to be seen. Had they been arrested? The business of the meeting commenced in grim quiet.

Then the clattering of hooves and jangle of armor was heard outside and everyone looked to the hall’s door. The lords of the League entered. To be certain they had everyone’s attention they dropped their helmets with a resounding crash upon the floor before they walked forward.

The royal bailiffs were surely outnumbered and out-armed. King Henry on his throne upon the dais asked, “What is this? Am I your prisoner?” But the men of the League knelt at his feet. 

“No my lord,” said the Marshall Roger Bigod, “This is our pledge – swear to follow your English subjects’ counsels. It is the best remedy for your troubles you can have!”

“How will you see to it I follow your counsels?” Henry responded.

Seeing a clerk holding a Bible nearby, Richard de Clare took the Bible and held it to his king. “Swear, with your hand on Holy Gospel, that you and your heir Edward will uphold the provisions of the Magna Carta! And that you will cause a Council to be chosen, all of good English subjects elected by the barony! And that you will do nothing without their advice!”

And Roger Bigod added, “Swear you’ll cease finding ways to crush your people with your monstrous taxes!”

With his hand on the Bible, Henry further was made to agree to the appointing of a committee of arbitration, half chosen by him and half by the lords of England, to arbitrate grievances. A meeting was to convene for arbitration and the election of the council within forty days. The chosen day was June 11. 

This astonishing coercion of King Henry III was confirmed by the lords confronting him with the original Magna Carta of 1215 -- which included a clause that had been deleted from later reissues. The primary Magna Carta stated that all England can be raised in arms against the king, to hold his castles and lands from him until grievances are satisfied.  This clause 61, sworn to by Henry’s father King John, had committed England to civil war until John died.

The reading of the clause turned Henry’s meeting into chaos. The king agreed to the convening of the lords and clergy at Oxford on June 11, and all were dismissed with this victory for the League.

Henry was sworn to permit the lords and clergy to meet in his absence -- with effective permission to raise their forces for battle against the Welsh, if they produced the tax he needed to pay the Pope. In fact he had agreed to allow a fully armed and revolutionary convention at Oxford to meet on June 11, 1258. 

(This and future blog entries, tracing the establishment of England’s Parliament as an elected body with power over the king, describe history as recorded in the documents of the period and are not matter of fiction. Part II will be on The Provisions of Oxford.)

Katherine Ashe is the author of Montfort The Angel with the Sword, which explores in novel form how these events may have come about in view of what records tell us of the personalities of the men and women involved.  

   

http://www.amazon.com/Montfort-Angel-Sword-1260-1265/dp/1452844232/ref=la_B004OTWHNQ_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1394395419&sr=1-4

book website: www.simon-de-montfort.com
personal website: www.katherineashe.com

History: Truth or Spin?

Much of the motive to explore history is to discover how we got to where we are today. It's a common step from there to seeing the historical process that has resulted in our present state as somehow inevitable.The conventional thread of most histories thus tends to justify the winner, and to assert a continuum of rightness from whatever period is under consideration up to the present day.

Consider the history of England as an example. Though post-Enlightenment, materialist historians might bridal at literally admitting it, there is a strong suggestion of the hand of God in the process, for each monarch reigns officially "by the Grace of God" and is "our undoubted queen (or king)" by virtue of that unbroken thread of right causality.

And then there is the other history of England. The one set by the wayside at each turning that either maintained the sovereignty despite a period of opposition, or shifted the sovereignty to new or premature hands and required justification, usually by disparaging the loser.

Henry VI must be portrayed as a near imbecile and Richard III a child-murderer for Henry Tudor to be embraced as God’s chosen King Henry VII. Edward II must be an outrageous homosexual to justify his queen’s seizing power from him on behalf of his young son, Edward III. But a catamite of King Richard I is said to have been hurled from a parapet by Richard’s followers who were aggravated that he spent his time at dalliance with the boy instead of attending to the business of crusade. Yet Richard’s homosexuality has not sullied his glorious reputation. In his case there was no regime change that needed to be justified.

The deep-delving historian often will find two or more sets of records from a period under study, the separate threads divided by the partisan leanings of the events' witnesses. Should this be surprising? Read the handbill news sheets of the time of George Washington’s presidency and you’ll find there were those who fully believed Washington was a secret agent for the French and a traitor to the interests of his country. Had the British vanquished the colonial rebels, that view of Washington might have become standard history. England was at odds with France, and France was the rebel colonists' chief ally.

Though George Washington as France's agent now seems utterly absurd to most Americans, arrays of spin can be pitfalls for any historian who attempts to assert a single “truth.” And when the era under study was filled with embittered and contending parties, the pitfalls are everywhere. 

Take for example the apparently miniscule and simple issue of how King Henry III of England identified himself during the battle of Evesham in 1265. Historians agree that he was traveling with – or under the control of – the Parliamentary party whose military leader was Simon de Montfort; that, when the cortege was pursued and eventually surrounded by the armies of Prince Edward, Henry accompanied the Montfortians into battle dressed in borrowed armor that concealed his identity; and that in the heat of the battle he cried out, “Don’t kill me!”

But did he say, “I’m Henry of Winchester, your king! Don’t kill me!” Or did he say, “I’m Henry of Monmouth! Don’t kill me!” This might seem a trivial question. The first is what one would expect of a competent, elderly monarch seeking to be rescued by Edward’s monarchist forces. They are the words a well-meaning historian constructing a consistent thread would put in Henry’s mouth. Yet the second outcry has the surreal ring of truth. The bright spark of the unexpected that real life often displays.

The historian faces the choice of conventionality, in keeping with the consistent monarchical thread, or of adherence to a reconstruction of the evidences surviving of, in this case, the Parliamentary partisans. For if the king said, “I’m Henry of Monmouth” (and the chronicler who recorded this added by way of explanation, “he was simple”), then here is witness that the king was in his dotage and incompetent – and the Parliamentarians were justified in controlling his actions for the sake of the realm. 

Monarchist or Parliamentarian – the record splits along political lines, the very lines that were essential to the issues in contention at the time.

  

If so seemingly small a particle of history can display such partisan weighting, what can be said of larger issues? And where lies truth? Is it the stream of events as interpreted by those who would justify history as leading inexorably to the present status quo? Or might it be tweezed out of the losing party’s surviving scraps of evidence? Or is it truly lost – if indeed a single truth ever existed?

Only the naïve maintain they know the truth of eras that were split and fractured by partisan politics. Or, in any comlex issue, that an objective truth ever can be asserted beyond question.

book website: www.simon-de-montfort.com
personal website: www.katherineashe.com

Katherine Ashe is the author of the  four volume Montfort novelized series
http://www.amazon.com/Katherine-Ashe/e/B004OTWHNQ/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1398361940&sr=1-2-ent

Democracy, Progress and a Lost Chance in 1265

I’ve recently returned from a conference sponsored by the Mortimer Society in the UK, the subject was “What if Simon de Montfort had won the battle of Evesham?” 

To those who haven’t gotten through the fourth volume of my book Montfort this mightn’t be an animating subject. But it is. For the history of Europe in any case. And indeed for all mankind.

If Simon de Montfort had won, there’s a chance that democratic government as we know it: the House of Lords and House of Commons, the Senate and Congress, etc., might have persisted intact in England from 1265 onward.

What would that have meant? The theology of Thomas Aquinas probably would have been squelched.

Aquinas held that God’s Creation presents an immutable hierarchy, from God through the gradations of angels and saints to the Pope, then kings, then each member of the rest of humanity -- who should properly be locked into the station in life into which he or she was born -- and from mankind thence to the animals down to the lowliest worm.

It is this tenet that granted kings divine rights -- power to do as they pleased so long as they didn’t offend the Pope.

Just possibly the French Revolution, inspired by England’s success, would have occurred in the early 14^th century instead of the late 18^th.  And all the revolutions that followed it might have come tumbling along by 1500.

The Wars of the Roses, battled between claimants to England’s throne, wouldn’t have happened. Being king wouldn’t have been such a tempting prize when the king’s actions were controlled by the Parliament.

Who would be king would be up to Parliament’s decision anyway -- as shown by the English people’s government’s predilection for Protestant over Catholic candidates when the Catholic’s rights were plain as 1-2-3.

And the wars between England and France, so costly in lives and wealth, wouldn’t have happened in all likelihood. Or perhaps they would, but the excuses would have been a clear matter of trade dominance rather than genealogical niceties. 

We’ve seen that people’s governments will surely go to war if it looks like a prospect for monopoly might be in it – be it monopoly of the wool processing trade, the Silk Route, petroleum or whatever is the dominant way to riches at the moment.

There is an intriguing aspect of history since the advent of governments guided by the vote of the people: that is the vast increase in competitive trade and what, in 19^th century America, was referred to as “building a better mouse trap.” 

This urge to develop something new and more appealing to the shopper is the engine that has changed our world. Horse travel, by cart or astride, has been replaced by a worldwide fleet of internal combustion engines. And now we’re trying to replace those.

Communications no longer are dependent upon the footman you keep; the stranger who happens to be going from Joppa to Toulouse where you hope your letter from Palestine will be received; the ship that may founder on its way from you in New York to your business partner in Canton.

That wonder of orderly government, the Postal System, has been all but replaced now by the instant communications of the internet and email.

Might these developments not have occurred if monarchy had continued to hold sway? Monarchy thrives on old customs and traditions and has a vested interest in shunning the new. 

We can see that in those countries where monarchy lasted late – monarchy curbed by elected government being the striking exception – the innovations that have changed the world did not take place.

If government by the people had lasted unperturbed from 1265 onward, would Nicholas Tesla and Bill Gates – no doubt with some other names – have brought forth their world changing discoveries by the year 1500? What would our world be now, five hundred years into further development?

Of course this isn’t what I spoke of at the Mortimer Society conference. I talked of Joachim de Flore and the Millennium – but I’ll write of that here next time.

book website: www.simon-de-montfort.com
personal website: www.katherineashe.com

Katherine Ashe is the author of the  four volume Montfort novelized series
http://www.amazon.com/Katherine-Ashe/e/B004OTWHNQ/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1398361940&sr=1-2-ent