pardoned and restored to his estates, but he lived privately, and never
more aspired to a high post in the realm, or to a high place in the
King’s favour. And thus end—more happily than the stories of many
favourites of Kings—the adventures of Earl Hubert de Burgh.
The nobles, who had risen in revolt, were stirred up to rebellion by
the overbearing conduct of the Bishop of Winchester, who, finding that
the King secretly hated the Great Charter which had been forced from
his father, did his utmost to confirm him in that dislike, and in the
preference he showed to foreigners over the English. Of this, and of
his even publicly declaring that the Barons of England were inferior to
those of France, the English Lords complained with such bitterness,
that the King, finding them well supported by the clergy, became
frightened for his throne, and sent away the Bishop and all his foreign
associates. On his marriage, however, with Eleanor, a French lady, the
daughter of the Count of Provence, he openly favoured the foreigners
again; and so many of his wife’s relations came over, and made such an
immense family-party at court, and got so many good things, and
pocketed so much money, and were so high with the English whose money
they pocketed, that the bolder English Barons murmured openly about a
clause there was in the Great Charter, which provided for the
banishment of unreasonable favourites. But, the foreigners only laughed
disdainfully, and said, ‘What are your English laws to us?’
King Philip of France had died, and had been succeeded by Prince Louis,
who had also died after a short reign of three years, and had been
succeeded by his son of the same name—so moderate and just a man that
he was not the least in the world like a King, as Kings went. Isabella,
King Henry’s mother, wished very much (for a certain spite she had)
that England should make war against this King; and, as King Henry was
a mere puppet in anybody’s hands who knew how to manage his feebleness,
she easily carried her point with him. But, the Parliament were
determined to give him no money for such a war. So, to defy the
Parliament, he packed up thirty large casks of silver—I don’t know how
he got so much; I dare say he screwed it out of the miserable Jews—and
put them aboard ship, and went away himself to carry war into France:
accompanied by his mother and his brother Richard, Earl of Cornwall,
who was rich and clever. But he only got well beaten, and came home.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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