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Henry III (1 October 1207 - 16 November 1272) is one of the least-known British monarchs, considering the great length of his reign. He was also the first child monarch in English royal history (post-Conquest, 1066). He was born in 1207 at Winchester Castle, the son of King John of England and Isabella of Angoulême. 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). Following John’s death in 1216, Henry, aged nine, was hastily crowned in Gloucester, as the barons who had been supporting the invasion of Prince Louis of France in order to ensure John's deposition quickly saw the young prince as a safer option. Henry's regents immediately declared their intention to rule by Magna Carta which they did during Henry’s minority. Magna Carta was reissued in 1217 as a sign of goodwill to the barons. The country was ruled by regents until 1227. When Henry reached maturity, however, 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 power and wealth. For instance, one Poitevin, Peter des Riveaux, held the offices of treasurer of the household, keeper of the king's wardrobe, keeper of the 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 himself, on the other hand, was much taken with the cult of the Anglo-Saxon Saint/King Edward the Confessor who had been canonized in 1161. Told that St Edward dressed austerely, 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, of course, he named his eldest son after him. 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 for the renovation of Westminster Abbey in Gothic style, and work began at great expense in 1245. The centrepiece of Henry's renovated Westminster Abbey was to be a shrine to the confessor king, Edward. 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 on 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." Henry's advancement of foreign favorites, notably his wife's Savoyard uncles and his own Lusignan half-siblings, was unpopular among his subjects and barons. He was also extravagant and avaricious; when his first child, Prince Edward was born, Henry demanded the Londoners bring him rich gifts to celebrate, and 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's reign came to be marked by civil strife, as the English barons led by de Montfort demanded more say in the running of the kingdom. French-born Simon de Montfort had originally been one of the foreign upstarts so loathed by many as Henry's foreign councillors; after he married Henry’s sister Eleanor without consulting Henry, a feud developed between the two. Their relationship reached a crisis in the 1250s when de Montfort was put on trial for actions he took as lieutenant of Gascony, the last remaining Plantagenet land across the English Channel. 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 which made many barons fearful that Henry was following in the footsteps of his father and needed to be kept in check, just as King John had. 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 three 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 1261 exempting him from his oath and both sides began to raise armies, the Royalists under Edward Longshanks, 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 May 14, 1264, Henry was defeated and taken prisoner by de Montfort's army. While Henry was reduced to a figurehead king, de Montfort broadened representation to include each county of England and many important towns - i.e. to groups beyond the nobility. Henry and Edward continued under house arrest. The short period which 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. But only fifteen months later Edward Longshanks had escaped captivity to lead the royalists into battle again, and turned the tables on de Montfort at the Battle of Evesham in 1265. Following this victory savage retribution was exacted on the rebels. Henry's shrine to Edward the Confessor was finally finished in 1269 and the saint's relics were installed. He died in 1272 and his body was lain temporarily in the tomb of the Confessor while his own sarcophagus was constructed in Westminster Abbey. Henry was succeeded by his son, Edward I of England. In the Divine Comedy Dante sees Henry ("the king of simple life") sitting outside the gates of Purgatory with other contemporary European rulers. Marriage and children Married on January 14, 1236, Canterbury Cathedral, Kent, England to Eleanor of Provence, with at least five children born: Edward I (1239-1307) Margaret (1240-1275), married King Alexander III of Scotland Beatrice (1242-1275), married to John II, Duke of Brittany Edmund Crouchback (1245-1296) Katharine (1253-1257) Note: there is reason to doubt the existence of several attributed children of Henry and Eleanor. Richard, John, and Henry are known only from a 14th century addition made to a manuscript of Flores historiarum, and are nowhere contemporaneously recorded. William 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's The Children of King Henry III and Eleanor of Provence (1992). http://en.wikipedia.org Another version: Henry III, King of England from 1216 to 1272. In the 24 years (1234-58) during which he had effective control of the government, he displayed such indifference to tradition that the barons finally forced him to agree to a series of major reforms, the Provisions of Oxford (1258). The elder son and heir of King John (ruled 1199-1216), Henry was nine years old when his father died. At that time London and much of eastern England were in the hands of rebel barons led by Prince Louis (later King Louis VIII of France), son of the French king Philip II Augustus. A council of regency presided over by the venerable William Marshal, 1st earl of Pembroke, was formed to rule for Henry; by 1217 the rebels had been defeated and Louis forced to withdraw from England. After Pembroke's death in 1219 Hubert de Burgh ran the government until he was dismissed by Henry in 1232. Two ambitious Frenchmen, Peter des Roches and Peter des Rivaux, then dominated Henry's regime until the barons brought about their expulsion in 1234. That event marked the beginning of Henry's personal rule. Although Henry was charitable and cultured, he lacked the ability to rule effectively. In diplomatic and military affairs he proved to be arrogant yet cowardly, ambitious yet impractical. The breach between the King and his barons began as early as 1237, when the barons expressed outrage at the influence exercised over the government by Henry's Savoyard relatives. The marriage arranged (1238) by Henry between his sister, Eleanor, and his brilliant young French favourite, Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, increased foreign influence and further aroused the nobility's hostility. In 1242 Henry's Lusignan half brothers involved him in a costly and disastrous military venture in France. The barons then began to demand a voice in selecting Henry's counsellors, but the King repeatedly rejected their proposal. Finally, in 1254 Henry made a serious blunder. He concluded an agreement with Pope Innocent IV (pope 1243-54), offering to finance papal wars in Sicily if the Pope would grant his infant son, Edmund, the Sicilian crown. Four years later Pope Alexander IV (pope 1254-61) threatened to excommunicate Henry for failing to meet this financial obligation. Henry appealed to the barons for funds, but they agreed to cooperate only if he would accept far-reaching reforms. These measures, the Provisions of Oxford, provided for the creation of a 15-member privy council, selected (indirectly) by the barons, to advise the King and oversee the entire administration. The barons, however, soon quarrelled among themselves, and Henry seized the opportunity to renounce the Provisions (1261). In April 1264 Montfort, who had emerged as Henry's major baronial opponent, raised a rebellion; the following month he defeated and captured the King and his eldest son, Edward, at the Battle of Lewes (May 14, 1264), Sussex. Montfort ruled England in Henry's name until he was defeated and killed by Edward at the Battle of Evesham, Worcestershire, in August 1265. Henry, weak and senile, then allowed Edward to take charge of the government. After the King's death, Edward ascended the throne as King Edward I. Encyclopædia Britannica 2006 Ultimate Reference Suite.
William B.
