Fatal as the friendship of Gregory IX. and Innocent IV. had been, it was the policy of Alexander IV. which broke the long-enduring patience of the baronage and compelled them to bind the king’s hands. Innocent IV. in 1252 had offered the kingdom of Sicily to Richard of Cornwall. The negotiation went on until in 1255 it was accepted, not for Richard, but for Edmund, the king’s second son. It might have been supposed that as the quarrel was the Pope’s Alexander would have hired Henry to fight his battles; but by this adroit system of enlistment he reversed the rule. He fought the battles and expected Henry to pay him. Henry was weak enough to bear this and even to pledge the credit of the kingdom to the Pope for the sum which the crafty Italian money-lender had advanced to maintain his own quarrel. It was this act that led to the demand for a new constitution, which opens the next great epoch of this long dismal reign.

Henry’s French transactions, the third of the three heads in which we have arranged the second portion of the reign, must be summed up very briefly, for they are in themselves the least important part of his history.

Of all the possessions of Henry II. only Aquitaine and Gascony remained to John at the time of his death; and these remained, not because they loved the Plantagenets, for they hated them, but because they hated all government, and found that distant England was a less vigorous mistress than nearer France. So, as they had opposed Henry II., they resisted Philip and Lewis; and they continued subject to the English kings until the reign of Henry VI., but shorn of their proportions. Henry III. in his early years entertained some idea of reclaiming all. In 1225 Richard of Cornwall was sent to Bourdeaux, and re-established order in Gascony; in 1229, during the minority of Lewis IX., not only Gascons but Normans proposed to Henry the restoration of the Continental dominions of his house; and in 1230 he actually went across by Brittany and Anjou and received the homage of Poictou, whilst the Earl of Chester made an attempt on Normandy. But in the following year a truce was made, and no more is said of a French war for twelve years. In 1242, however, at the invitation of the Poictevins, over whom Lewis had set his brother Alfonso as count, Henry made a great expedition, which he managed with so little felicity that he owed his escape from captivity to the mercy of his enemy, just as he owed his continued possession of Gascony to that enemy’s good faith. After his return home in 1243 the only foreign difficulties which occurred for several years arose from the conduct of the Gascons, who, finding no pressure put upon them by Lewis, took courage to rebel on their own account, and required constant chastisement. From 1249 onwards Simon de Montfort was employed to keep them in order; and whilst his demands for money were one cause of Henry’s difficulties at home, Henry’s treatment of him laid the foundation of a lasting enmity. The complaints of the Gascons against his severe administration were readily listened to, and Simon was easily convinced that his employment in France was a mere expedient for securing his ruin. In 1253 he resigned his command, and Henry for the third time went in person to France, where he stayed for a year and a half, returning at the end of 1254 more hopelessly in debt than ever.

From this point the accumulating grievances of the nation, whether constitutional, religious, or political, blend in one mass; all the oppressed and offended make common cause. Extortion, faithlessness, improvidence, impotence at home and abroad, compel and suggest their own remedy; and every class having been insulted or oppressed, the time and the men for reform and revenge are not wanting.