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After King Richard of England died in 1199, his brother John made Canterbury archbishop Hubert Walter chancellor and sent him and William Marshal to help justiciar Geoffrey Fitz Peter put down the revolts that sprang up from the news of Richard's death. John's coronation at Westminster on May 25 was well attended. He continued Richard's war against King Philip II of France for Normandy which paused for another truce at Le Goulet in 1200. John was recognized as Richard's heir and did homage to Philip for his French possessions, and his nephew Arthur was recognized in Brittany as John's vassal. John also ceded the Vexin and Evreux to Philip. That year the English church made marriage more difficult by requiring that banns be announced in church on three occasions. The erratic John the next year seized lands of rebellious barons in Poitou and suggested a trial by combat using champions. Philip summoned John to Paris; but when he refused to appear, the war was renewed in 1202. Aquitane was threatened; John's two brothers-in-law, Count Raymond VI of Toulouse and King Alfonso IX of Castile, defected, though John made a treaty with the king of Navarre.
John's cruel treatment of prisoners lost him public favor, and many suspected that he had murdered Arthur, who disappeared after he was captured by John. Normandy was nearly lost when John retreated to England in December 1203. John tried to raise money to recruit more mercenaries. While he was arranging to have wild animals sent across the channel for his hunting pleasure, Chateau Gaillard, the castle Richard had built, was taken by storm in March 1204. This enabled Philip's army to over-run central Normandy as loyalty to John faded; Rouen surrendered to Philip in June. King John had lost all of Normandy except the Channel Islands. Most Norman barons had to choose whether to keep their lands in England or on the continent. Wood from forests as well as coal was used to fuel furnaces to smelt iron. In 1204 men of Essex offered the King 500 marks and five palfreys for a forest near Colchester, and Cornwall was prepared to spend 2,200 marks for deforestation and Devon 5,000 marks. By the end of John's reign the coal trade of Newcastle-upon-Tyne was established.
John developed the English navy. For example, 112 pirates were beheaded in the Scilly islands in 1209. As of 1205 every Englishman over the age of 12 was liable to military service for national defense, and many were impressed onto English ships. John landed at La Rochelle in 1206 and captured a castle in Gascony. He tried to use the German allies Richard had gained; but in 1206 England's commercial partner of Cologne had to capitulate as his ally Otto IV fled to England. Chancellor Hubert Walter supervised Jewish transactions at the Exchequer as John had protected their rights in a 1201 charter. After the capable chancellor and archbishop of Canterbury, Hubert Walter, died in 1205, John tried to get the monks of Canterbury to accept Bishop John de Gray of Norwich; but they elected the scholar Stephen Langton, and he was consecrated by Pope Innocent III at Viterbo in 1207. Since King John refused to accept his appointment, Stephen remained for six years at the Cistercian monastery at Pontigny, where Becket had resided. John seized the revenues of Canterbury, driving the monks into exile. York archbishop Geoffrey opposed the King's tax of a thirteenth on church rents and movables and excommunicated the collectors and tax payers before he fled England.
In 1208 Pope Innocent III got the bishops of London, Ely, and Worcester to impose an interdict on England, suspending ecclesiastical rites, and those three bishops had to flee too. The next year John met with Stephen's brother Simon Langton but then decided to confiscate the property of clergy who refused to celebrate their offices. At Oxford a student killed a woman and fled; but his roommates were hanged, causing teachers and students to leave Oxford in protest until a new agreement was made with the town in 1214. This boycott stimulated the forming of a second university at Cambridge.
Before the end of 1209 King John had been excommunicated, which meant that anyone associating with him could also be excommunicated. Exchequer records indicate that state revenues from the churches went from 400 pounds in 1209 to 3,700 the next year and to 24,000 pounds in 1211, and there were other revenues from churches in addition. These funds helped pay for John's military campaigns to subdue Scotland, Ireland, and Wales in the next three years, and he had the Welsh hostages hanged. Norwich bishop John de Gray was justiciar of Ireland from 1208 to 1213, and John invaded with William Marshal in 1210 to punish de Lacy. An English chronicler reported that twenty Irish kings did homage to John and swore to observe the English laws. John tried to build a coalition; the Count of Boulogne helped him gain Count Ferrand of Flanders as an ally in 1213 as Philip invaded Flanders. Threatened with an invasion by France, John submitted to the Pope and accepted Stephen Langton as archbishop of Canterbury, reinstating the exiled clergy and compensating the church's losses. John even pledged fealty to Pope Innocent and promised to pay a tribute of 1,000 marks annually.
On May 28, 1213 Salisbury earl William and the count of Boulogne led 700 English and Flemish knights on 500 ships with thousands of soldiers to surprise the French camp, reported to have 1,700 vessels, while French soldiers were dispersed besieging Ghent and plundering the region. Those ships that were not captured or destroyed were ordered burned by Philip Augustus five days later, ending the threat of a French invasion. King John planned to invade from Portsmouth while the count of Flanders and Otto were to strike from the northeast; but English barons refused to participate because John was still under excommunication. John was formally absolved at Winchester, but northern barons would not fight outside of England. While John set out for Poitou, hoping his forces would follow, he left the kingdom to be governed by the bishop of Winchester and Justiciar Geoffrey Fitz Peter. A council at St. Albans declared that the laws of Henry I were to be observed, and bad laws that allowed sheriffs, foresters, and other officials to extort were to be ended. Archbishop Stephen Langton read Henry I's charter of liberties to the barons at an assembly at St. Paul's and persuaded John not to punish the men who had not followed him.
John sent funds to support the counts of Flanders, Holland, and Boulogne and the dukes of Brabant and Limburg against the French. After Justiciar Geoffrey Fitz Peter died, John appointed Peter des Roches of Poitou, who was unpopular with the barons and the church. In 1214 with a small army, mostly of mercenaries, John invaded Aquitane; but in July the barons of Poitou refused to fight a battle and deserted. Later that month the Netherlands coalition was defeated by the French at Bouvines, ending Otto's reign as Emperor and John's attempt to recover continental territory. John agreed to a truce and returned to England in October 1214. Barons irritated by John's injustices met at Stamford during Easter week in 1215, and in May these insurgents joined the mayor and councilors of London. Archbishop Langton arranged a truce between the king and the barons while the Great Charter was developed. King John granted London a charter confirming their privileges and giving them the right to elect their mayor annually; but when the barons refused John's suggested arbitration, he ordered sheriffs to confiscate their lands and chattels.
On June 15, 1215 the two parties met on the field at Runnymede, and King John put his seal on the Articles of the Barons; the Magna Carta was completed four days later. This famous milestone in human rights enunciated many important principles within the context of current feudal law. The liberties of the church with its free elections are guaranteed. Feudal abuses are to be reformed. Wards of an inheritance can take no more than is reasonable. A widow's property rights are protected, and no widow is to be forced to marry. No scutage or payment for an emergency is to be imposed unless by common counsel of the kingdom. A lord may take reasonable aid only to ransom his own person, make his eldest son a knight, or to marry his eldest daughter. The liberties and free customs of all cities, boroughs, towns, and ports are confirmed. A fixed court is to hear lawsuits, and inquests are to be held in each county. Penalties called "amercements" are to be proportionate to the offense and must be decided by a jury of peers. No sheriff, constable, or other bailiff shall try serious crimes. No constable or bailiff shall take anyone's grain or chattels without paying for them. Standards for weights and measures are established to protect consumers. No one can be put on trial without reliable witnesses. Next comes the important principles that would be emphasized in later centuries.
No freeman shall be arrested or imprisoned or disseised
or outlawed or exiled or in any way destroyed,
neither will we set forth against him or send against him,
except by the lawful judgment of his peers and by the law of the land.
To no one will we sell, to no one will we refuse or delay right or justice.1
Merchants and others except criminals are granted the right to come and go free of evil tolls except during war. Those from countries at war will be kept in custody without injury until the chief justiciar knows how merchants are treated in their country. Some restraint is put on forest officers to limit their oppression, and inquiries are to investigate and end abuses. A council of 25 barons is established to settle previous disputes and to make sure that the reforms are enforced.
Pope Innocent III tried to annul the charter by excommunicating anyone who observed it; but Archbishop Langton refused to authorize the excommunications. So the papal nuncio Pandulf and the bishop of Winchester suspended the archbishop. Barons intent on getting rid of King John took up arms and even offered the crown to Louis, son of Philip Augustus. The barons remained in London while John's forces controlled the castles; only Rochester resisted but was taken. The many foreign mercenaries in John's royal army plundered the land. Louis did not join the barons at London until May 1216 as the Scottish army captured Carlisle. King John retreated to the west to get reinforcements from Wales; but he became ill with dysentery and died on October 18, 1216.
John's oldest son Henry was nine years old but was made king ten days after his father's death. When he was knighted, Henry did homage to the papal legate Gualo. Then he was crowned by Peter des Roches, bishop of Winchester, since Canterbury archbishop Stephen Langton was in Rome. The English government was in disarray with no exchequer, no royal seal, and no money in the treasury. Less than a third of the barons had remained loyal, and Louis with the rebelling barons held London and half the shires of England. Earl Ranulf of Chester recommended the aged William Marshal to head the government, and he was named rector of the king and kingdom while Peter des Roches remained Henry's tutor and guardian. Justiciar Hubert de Burgh renewed a truce with Louis at Dover and arrived at Bristol for a council that revised the Great Charter. Most church authorities remained loyal, and Gualo granted the remission of sins for those fighting on the side of Henry. According to the Dunstable annalist the French alienated some of the English by calling them traitors and by not restoring their rights. This was in stark contrast to the generous terms offered to those becoming loyal again and to the confirming of the Great Charter, which now established the age of majority at 21 years.
William Marshal raised money by selling jewels and rich garments found in royal castles. His eldest son and the earl of Salisbury came back to Henry's side; but the turning point was a military victory at Lincoln that captured 46 barons and 300 knights, which was half of the rebel knights. Aside from fleeing infantry slaughtered by people in the countryside, only two men were killed in this battle. Louis gave up his siege of Dover and returned to London. His wife Blanche of Castile raised some forces in France; but they and the fierce Eustace the Monk were defeated in a sea battle off Sandwich. Eustace was beheaded, and the booty was used to build the hospital of St. Bartholomew to commemorate the victory. Louis agreed to peace at Kingston in September 1217. A general amnesty restored lands with no ransoms except those previously agreed, and liberties in England were protected by the Charter. Only the rebelling ecclesiastics were subject to the discipline of the papal legate. The regency agreed to pay Louis 10,000 marks, and two merchants of St. Omer provided some cash. Marshal promised his lands in Normandy as security, and Louis promised to respect the English lands on the continent. In the next three months a thousand writs restored confiscated estates.
Another council in 1217 issued a revision of the Great Charter and added the Charter of the Forest that for the first time established written law in place of royal will so that henceforth no one would lose life or limb for a forest violation. Scot king Alexander surrendered Carlisle and was absolved. Peace was made with the Welsh prince Llywelyn ab Iorwerth, though the latter demanded as part of the treaty that Marshal return the Welsh lands taken from Morgan. Law was enforced by local sheriffs, but raising money from them was difficult. The Exchequer reopened; a royal seal was made; and in November 1218 justices of a general eyre began making their circuits in eight districts. Gualo departed and was replaced by Pandulf as papal legate. Both Pandulf and Archbishop Langton urged Marshal to ban tournaments; although the old knight had loved the contests and believed they offered training, he forbade them to protect the peace. William Marshal was eighty when he died in May 1219, recommending the legate Pandulf rather than Winchester bishop Peter des Roches.
Papal legate Pandulf was a leader in the administration until 1221. The council put the justiciar Hubert de Burgh in charge of attesting royal letters and the seal while Bishop Peter des Roches continued as King Henry's guardian until 1221. Henry was crowned again in 1220 with great ceremony by Canterbury archbishop Stephen Langton, who also canonized St. Hugh of Lincoln and preached a crusade. The barons swore to surrender royal castles and to help put down anyone resisting, such as William de Forze, who had married the heiress of Aumale. When William de Forze did finally submit to the justiciar, he was absolved and pardoned. Hubert de Burgh raised his status in 1221 by marrying Margaret, sister of Scotland's king, and he became earl of Kent. That year Archbishop Langton persuaded the Pope to withdraw his legate, and he welcomed the first Dominicans to England; the next year he affirmed the unity of the Western Church. In 1224 the first Franciscans arrived in England.
Archbishop Langton and the Justiciar Hubert were opposed by a party led by Peter des Roches and Earl Ranulf of Chester. The archbishop managed to work out a truce, but in 1223 Pope Honorius issued letters declaring the young king mature enough to control the seal. By the end of that year Peter, Ranulf, Fawkes, Engelard and others had lost their castles and sheriffdoms. Fawkes de Breauté previously had been guilty of dispossessing several men. His brother William de Breauté had resisted with violence and had been hanged with several others at Bedford in 1223. The Great Charter was issued with slight revisions once again in 1225 as a justification for taxation of a fifteenth on the movables of every householder. The king issued the Charter of his own free will, and the provision enforcing the charter by 25 barons was omitted. This tax was used to finance the war with France.
Earl William Marshal of Pembroke invaded Wales in 1223. The truce with France had been renewed in 1220 for four years; but after Louis VIII became king, he invaded Poitou in 1224. Henry's mother Isabel had returned to Angouleme in 1217 and married Hugues de Lusignan in 1220. Her daughter Joan had been betrothed to Hugues but married Scot king Alexander II in 1221 after having been detained by her mother for her dowry. Before attacking, Louis had promised to recognize the lands of Hugues claimed as Isabel's dowry. In 1225 Henry made his 16-year-old brother Richard earl of Cornwall and sent him to be count of Poitou with the earl of Salisbury; they lost Poitou but managed to defend Gascony. Louis died in 1226, but Queen Blanche of Castile gained Hugues and Isabel as vassals of France.
About four years before becoming Pope Innocent III in 1198, Lothar of Segni wrote On the Contempt of the World or On the Misery of the Human Condition. Using many quotations from the Old and New Testaments, this pessimistic tract described how humans in many ways are less well off than other animals, being helpless at birth and lacking covering nor producing fruit. He satirized the vanities of married women, noted the terrors of nightmares, the pain of sickness, sudden sorrows, and the miseries of old age. No other creature has invented such cruel punishments to torture and execute brothers. In the second book he held moral evils responsible for humans' lack of happiness because of the desires for power, pleasure, and honors. He drew character portraits of the drunkard, the parvenu, and the proud man, describing how petty are those who unscrupulously seek advancement in the world. Those with a little wealth soon desire more, never being satisfied, and the same is true for pleasures. Man always wants more. The vices he delineated included sexual deviations. Finally in the third book the future Innocent warned about the eternal pains of hell and the irrevocable damnation of the condemned when penance and amending one's life becomes too late. He promised to write another book on how human dignity can be redeemed by Christ; but he became preoccupied with the power of the papacy which he developed to perhaps its greatest extent.
When his father Heinrich VI died in 1197, Friedrich had already been elected king; but he was not yet three years old. Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) used these circumstances to regain political power for the papacy by getting the Welf Otto IV to agree to papal recuperations in imperial Italy by supporting Innocent's legal claims. The Staufen Philip, duke of Swabia, was the late Heinrich's brother and had the imperial treasury at Trifels. He won over princes and Cologne archbishop Adolf with promises and was elected king of Germany also, resulting in another civil war over the succession. Otto had been brought up in the Anglo-Norman court, and King Richard I had made him duke of Aquitane; but he had only a third of the Welf allod in Brunswick-Luneburg. Otto was so greedy and ruthless that he even proposed making the brothels a source of imperial income. Otto's English support declined when Richard died in 1199. That year the princes at Speyer issued a declaration protesting papal interference in imperial affairs, but in 1201 Otto issued a decree from Neuss giving his rights in central Italy and Sicily to the Pope and even promising to make peace with France. Pope Innocent III then excommunicated Philip.
In the north Bremen archbishop Hartwig II (1185-1207) got Pope Celestine III in 1195 and Innocent III in 1198 to authorize crusading privileges to those invading Livonia, where knights called Sword-Brothers were organized about 1202. A few years later Bishop Christian of Prussia formed the Knights of Dobrin. Bishop Albert moved his see downriver to Riga, which attracted German settlers, and he converted half the Livs under their leader Caupo. Semigallians helped defeat Lithuanian raiders in 1205, and two years later the leader of Kukenois gave Bishop Albert half his land. Most of the Letts were governed by Riga as Kukenois and Jersika were occupied by 1209. In the next nine years the southern Estonians were subjugated. The Christian knights offered protection against the Lithuanians and Russians, helped the Livs and Letts attack the Estonians, and increased trade and wealth.
After the German emperor Heinrich VI died, the communes of Florence, Siena, Lucca, Arezzo, and Pisa formed the Tuscan League in November 1197. The commune in Florence got the Alberti clan to surrender all their castles and way-tolls in 1200, and two years later after five campaigns Semifonte, the town the Alberti built to compete with Florentine trade, was destroyed. These communes often fought each other over disputed territory, and Florence and Pisa had a forty-year defensive alliance and commercial treaty since 1171. While German emperors were struggling for control, the Lombard League led by Milan fought Cremona and its allies. During the era of the Tuscan League, consuls were replaced by the single authority of the podesta, who was usually a foreigner swearing to obey the constitution and serving for only one year at the end of which an audit might deduct fines from his salary. Genoa had replaced their commune with a podesta as early as 1190. This system replaced the consuls, who had often divided in civil war. Florence went to war with Siena in 1207. Siena started using the annual foreign podesta in 1211, and a popular social party emerged there by at least 1213.
Pope Innocent III helped Romans defeat Viterbo in 1199 and dictated the terms of its surrender. In 1202 Innocent's brother Richard Conti offended Count Odo of the Poli house, and hostility against the Conti family increased when the Pope claimed Poli estates as papal fiefs for the Contis. Innocent had to flee Rome for Palestrina in 1203. The conflict was resolved when four umpires chose Innocent to elect the senate. First he allowed 56 senators; but six months later he selected Pandulf as the single senator for Rome. The new peace was memorialized in the Conti tower in 1205.
Pope Innocent compelled Heinrich VI's widow Constance as regent in Sicily to concede control over apostolic legates, appeals to the Pope, and the holding of synods, while she retained only some influence over the election of prelates. By restoring Walter of Palear as chancellor and promising to pay tribute for Apulia and Marsica she obtained the Pope's investiture of Sicily for herself and her son Friedrich before she died in November 1198. Pope Innocent became young Friedrich's guardian and appointed as the government of Sicily a council of four bishops that included Walter of Palear. When the German Markward tried to take over Sicily in 1200, Innocent sent a papal army commanded by his cousin Marshal Giacopo that defeated Markward, who nonetheless came back to take Palermo the next year. Innocent called on Walter of Brienne, who claimed Sicily as the son-in-law of the last Norman king Tancred. Markward died in 1202; but after his successor William Caperone defeated and killed Walter of Brienne in 1205, he came over to the Pope's side and restored young Friedrich to the papal legate Cardinal Gherardo and Walter of Palear. The regency ended in 1208 when Pope Innocent considered Friedrich old enough at 14 to marry Constance, the widowed queen of Hungary and sister of Pedro II of Aragon. Young Friedrich tried to conquer Sicily by arresting some nobles and confiscating their lands.
Otto IV gained support from the secular princes of Bohemia and Thuringia, got Denmark as an ally by giving them Nordalbingia and Slavinia, and made a defensive alliance against France with England's King John. However, when the English lost Normandy to the French in 1204, even Otto's brother Heinrich and Cologne archbishop Adolf abandoned him. As Otto fled Germany, Philip of Swabia was re-crowned at Aachen after a new election. Even though Philip had sent an army led by the Bishop of Worms to challenge papal recuperation of Italy, he was absolved of the excommunication in 1207. Philip was murdered at Bamberg in 1208 by the Bavarian count palatine, Otto of Wittelsbach, because Philip's daughter, who had been engaged to him, married the Pope's nephew. German princes elected Otto king at Frankfurt, and after repeating his promises to Pope Innocent, Otto was crowned Emperor at Rome the next year. Yet when Otto invaded Friedrich II's Sicilian kingdom in 1210, Innocent excommunicated him and the following year released Otto's vassals from their oaths of allegiance. Now Friedrich II gained papal support, which won over the archbishop of Mainz, the king of Bohemia, and the landgrave of Thuringia, causing Otto to give up his Sicilian campaign to return to Germany.
When Pope Innocent III ordered the Italian cities to repudiate Emperor Otto IV, Florentines, who disliked Friedrich's grandfather and supported the Welf Otto, came to be called Guelfs, while those supporting the Hohenstaufen Waiblingen family were called in Italian Ghibellini. In 1213 Friedrich sent his kinsman Bishop Frederick of Trent to Italy as his imperial legate. After Friedrich II promised to go on crusade and punish heretics while not interfering in ecclesiastical elections, appeals, courts and administration, the fourth Lateran Council of 1215 confirmed him as Emperor. This peace for a crusade was not accepted by fighting Milan and Piacenza nor by Genoa and Pisa, and Innocent III died the next year. The murder of Buondelmonte in 1216 led to a civil war in Florence between the Ghibelline Uberti and the Guelf Buondelmonti adherents.
The fourth Lateran Council and twelfth Ecumenical Council of 1215 was attended by 412 bishops, 800 abbots and priors, other delegates, and imperial and royal ambassadors. Innocent's other purpose besides promoting the crusade for Jerusalem was to improve the Church. Full indulgence was promised to those contributing to the crusade, and business with Saracens was boycotted for four years. The council confirmed the doctrine of transubstantiation and established the Inquisition against heretics. The ideas on the trinity of Joachim of Fiore and the pantheism of Amaury of Bena were condemned. The hierarchy of bishops was set with Rome pre-eminent, and the first papal tithes were imposed on the clergy, which also had to consult the Pope before paying taxes to civil authorities. The Benedictine and Augustinian orders were reformed, and additional monastic orders were forbidden. All Christians should confess their sins to a priest at least once a year, and priests who revealed secrets of the confessional were to be relegated to a monastery for the rest of their lives. Clerics were forbidden to participate in any death sentences. The Church authorities in each province or diocese should be freely and lawfully elected as Gratian had codified. Clergy should avoid intemperance, incontinence, hunting, gambling, theatrical entertainment, executions, duels, and inns. A dress code for clerics was devised, and Jews and Muslims were ordered to wear distinctive clothes in order to guard against carnal intercourse with Christians. Jews were banned from holding civil offices.
Friedrich II had been brought up in Sicily as an orphan exploited for his wealth and power. He released papal fears of a large empire by having his son Heinrich crowned king of Sicily even though he was only one year old. Friedrich made a treaty with France that gained him 20,000 marks, and he was elected king of Germany at Frankfurt in December 1212 though he had to be crowned at Mainz since Otto controlled Aachen. In his Golden Bull of Eger Friedrich now made the same concessions to the Pope that Otto had made. In 1214 both King John of England and Otto IV of Germany were defeated in France by the army of King Philip II. The following year Friedrich's forces defeated the Welf army in the Lower Rhine of Lorraine, enabling him to be crowned at Aachen. Otto fled to Cologne and died in 1218. After Pope Innocent died in 1216, Friedrich tried to get his young son Heinrich VII, already king of Sicily, elected king of Germany too. He made Heinrich duke of Swabia in 1217 and rector of Burgundy in 1219.
Pope Honorius III (1216-1227) sent Cardinal Ugolino as his legate, and he mediated a peace between Genoa and Pisa in 1218. The same year a papal interdict stimulated Milan and Pavia to submit to peace; but in Rome a restored commune drove the Pope out to Viterbo. After his son Heinrich VII was crowned king of the Romans, Friedrich promised not to incorporate the Sicilian kingdom into the constitutional law of the Roman empire and got Rome to recall Pope Honorius so that Friedrich could be crowned Emperor in 1220. After the Florentine and Pisan delegations clashed at his coronation, Pisa formed a Ghibelline alliance with Siena, while Florence, as the Guelf supporters of the Pope, turned to Siena's enemy Lucca. Because of the conflict with the Pope, Friedrich had to withdraw his central power from ecclesiastical territories.
Cologne archbishop Engelbert helped Heinrich VII rule Germany, and he wanted a connection with England; but Friedrich arranged for King Heinrich to marry Margaret, the daughter of the Babenberg duke Leopold of Austria. During the wedding celebration Engelbert was murdered by his own resentful kin. When Dane king Valdemar II was captured by Heinrich of Schwerin after mistreating him in peace time, Valdemar gained his release in a treaty by paying a ransom and ceding territory from the Eider to Pomerania. Once free, Valdemar renounced the treaty as made under duress, and he was absolved from his oath by the Pope. However, Friedrich declared Lübeck an imperial city in 1226, and the next year the empire won the lands back from Valdemar in battle. Germans spread into Baltic lands, and the Teutonic Order was established in Prussia. A new league of German cities was banned by the new imperial regent, Duke Ludwig of Bavaria, because the ecclesiastical princes wanted to rule the cities.
In Sicily Friedrich reduced the mountain tribes of Arabs and created a standing army, and he established loyal Saracen troops at the military colony of Lucera in Apulia. The Norman navy was improved, and resources were gained by revoking the trading privileges of Genoa and Pisa. His royal justiciar dominated legal processes, and Friedrich increased the number of lawyers by founding a university at Naples in 1224. He provided subsidies for poor students to attend the university, and he chose his administrators based on their ability rather than for their noble family. Emperor Friedrich promulgated twenty constitutions to reform the Norman judicial system and demolished threatening castles while building imperial ones. He had been putting off his pledge to go on crusade for years; but in 1225 Friedrich committed himself to doing so within two years, and he married Isabella, daughter of Jerusalem king John of Brienne. In 1226 Milan, Bologna, Brescia, Mantua, Bergamo, Turin, Vicenza, Padua, and Treviso formed a second Lombard League with an offensive and defensive alliance for 25 years, and it was joined by the communes of Piacenza, Verona, Faenza, Vercelli, Lodi, and Alessandria.
Friedrich embarked on the crusade in August 1227 but became so ill that he had to return. The new Pope Gregory IX (1227-1241) excommunicated him for breaking his vow; but the Pope was so unpopular in Rome that he was driven out for almost two years. Without getting absolved, Friedrich led 1,000 knights and about 10,000 pilgrims the next year; using his fluent Arabic he made a treaty regaining access to Jerusalem in 1229. However, the Emperor's concessions to the Muslims caused the patriarch of Jerusalem to excommunicate Friedrich, who was pelted by a mob when he left Acre.
Friedrich had left Duke Rainald of Spoleto in Sicily as vicegerent, and he had invaded the Papal States as soon as Pope Gregory tried to set up a king in Germany. Gregory reacted by sending an army commanded by the Church to attack the Sicilian kingdom, and they occupied half the mainland before Friedrich returned from Palestine. Friedrich organized his troops and drove them out; but in the treaty at San Germano in 1230 that lifted his excommunication Friedrich returned papal lands and promised not to tax Sicilian clergy nor to interfere with ecclesiastical elections and courts. Friedrich besieged and banished his faulty deputy Rainald of Spoleto, and in 1233 he punished Messina, Syracuse and other Sicilian towns.
Friedrich's Constitutions of Melfi in 1231 established his dominance over the government of Sicily. Peter de Vinea was put in charge of the chancery and composed a new code of laws to replace customary and feudal laws such as ordeals and rights of wreck. This royal law claimed all jurisdiction and aimed to guarantee personal liberty by protecting foreigners and the weak against the strong, by recognizing female inheritance, and by trying to prevent instead of punish crime. The poor were given free access to justice, and widows and orphans were even subsidized by the state. Friedrich established annual fairs in 1234, and he lowered tax on exported grain from a third to a sixth, suppressing internal customs to promote trade. Income from monopolies granted to the Jews greatly increased state revenues but exhausted the country's resources. Some scholars believe that Sicily at this time was the most prosperous and civilized state in Europe.
In Germany King Heinrich VII disagreed with his regent Ludwig and by military force took control of the government in 1229. Heinrich recognized the league of cities; but the bishop of Liege persuaded the princes at Worms in 1231 to make illegal any efforts by the ecclesiastical princes to form pacts, and the next year Emperor Friedrich canceled all councils, mayoralties, and official functions installed in German cities without the consent of the episcopal lord. Gradually the princes and bishops were gaining territorial authority. Friedrich summoned his son Heinrich for confirming a city council of Worms. Heinrich submitted to his father Friedrich at Aquileia but resented his lack of independence.
By 1230 the Sword-Brothers had a bad reputation in Livonia, and their master Folkwin could not persuade the Teutonic knights to accept them. In 1236 Folkwin and fifty Sword-Brothers were exterminated while attacking Lithuanians. The Teutonic knights used a similar strategy of establishing forts in a campaign to conquer Prussia. Beginning from the Polish fort of Chelmno in 1230, they secured the Vistula River the next year. The Cistercian bishop Christian of Prussia was captured in 1233 and held for six years. That year Margrave Heinrich of Meissen brought 500 knights and founded Elbing, and in 1234 Pope Gregory IX granted the knights a state in Prussia. By 1239 a garrison at Balga was threatening the trade of Danzig duke Swantopelk, who with his river fleet launched a war in 1242 that lasted ten years; but Polish princes helped the knights defeat Swantopelk.
Mendicant orders of Franciscans spread to Germany while Dominicans gained a commission in 1231 to combat heresy. Elizabeth, princess of Hungary and widow of the Thuringian landgrave, became a Franciscan and nursed lepers; she was heralded as a saint when she died in 1231. Her confessor Conrad of Marburg was authorized by the Pope to head the Inquisition in Germany. Fanaticism led to many trials, and eighty men were condemned to be burned alive. Conrad and twelve of his officers were killed in the street in 1233 by the men of Chevalier von Dornbach. Peasants of Stedingen had been imprisoned by Conrad and burned for refusing to pay tithes to the Archbishop of Bremen, and the next year about 6,000 more were massacred by an army of crusaders led by the Duke of Brabant and the counts of Oldenburg, Cleve, and Holland. King Heinrich pleased many princes when he prohibited the preaching of crusades of violence against alleged heretics because such campaigns subverted civil order. Charges of heresy were to be judged soberly in ordinary courts. However, this challenged Friedrich's policy against heresy. Heinrich got further into trouble when he made an alliance with France and approved the Lombard League's closing of the Alpine passes to imperial troops. Friedrich went to Germany, and he suspected his son of trying to poison him. Heinrich was deposed at a court in Worms in 1235 and imprisoned until he died in an accident seven years later.
In 1230 Pope Gregory IX assigned to Ramon de Penyafort the task of codifying the five collections of canon laws, and in 1234 the Five Books of the Decretals were promulgated. Pope Boniface VIII added a sixth book in 1298, and these stood as the basis of canon law until the 19th century. Gregory tried to mediate with the Lombard League that had closed the Alpine passes to the Germans by sending the Dominican friar John of Vicenza in 1233; but the Pope could not reconcile the Romans with Viterbo, and after being exiled again he reacted by proclaiming a crusade against Rome. Gregory turned to Friedrich; but he had to return to Germany to face the rebellion by his son Heinrich. Sicilian troops helped the Pope win at Viterbo, and Gregory returned to Rome in 1235. That year he helped negotiate an end to a six-year war between Florence and Siena.
Irritated by French encroachment in Provence, Friedrich married Isabella, sister of English king Henry III. At a 1235 Mainz court Friedrich healed the Welf-Staufen conflict by making Heinrich the Lion's grandson Otto duke of Luneburg and Brunswick, and he also declared an imperial peace with severe penalties for those persisting in feuds. Barons were no longer allowed to molest and rob citizens, who were forbidden to deprive the nobility of their serfs. The nobility had to stop building castles at the expense of the peasants. Friedrich took control of tolls and mints and appointed a royal justiciar as he had in Sicily. Princes took an oath to join the upcoming Italian campaign. In 1237 he made Vienna an imperial city and had the princes elect his nine-year-old son Conrad IV king of the Romans and future emperor. Friedrich tried to bring the Babenberg duchies of Austria and Styria under imperial administration; but the King of Bohemia and the Duke of Bavaria opposed this and made him lift the ban on the Babenberg duke Friedrich, whose childless death in 1246 nonetheless resulted in imperial control over Austria and Styria.
Despite the Pope's objections, Friedrich decided to subjugate Italy and invaded in 1236, burning Vicenza. His imperial army, using 10,000 Saracens from Lucera, defeated the Lombard League at Cortenuova in 1237. Milan asked for terms, but Friedrich demanded surrender. Calling on troops from Sicily, Hungary, Germany, and Provence in 1238, Friedrich nonetheless could not take heroic Brescia. Friedrich gained papal Sardinia by marrying his illegitimate son Enzio to its heiress Adelasia. (Friedrich loved beautiful women and had several children by his mistresses.) The rhetoric between Pope and Emperor escalated as each referred to the other as the beast of the Apocalypse. Gregory called the Emperor the forerunner of the anti-Christ and condemned him for disbelieving that God was born from a virgin. Friedrich reacted by taxing papal territories; he believed that the papacy was indulging in pride, luxury, and secularism, and he suggested it should go back to the apostolic simplicity of primitive Christianity. Pope Gregory made an alliance with Genoa and Venice against the Emperor for nine years and excommunicated Friedrich in 1239. The Pope raised a war chest by getting 15,000 silver marks from the Lombard League, contributions from Christians, and loans from bankers. Friedrich successfully besieged Milan but lost Ferrara and Ravenna to the Lombards though he subdued most of Tuscany.
When Gregory called a council in Rome in 1241, the Emperor had most of the foreigners arrested before they could get there. Gregory died that year, and no one could get two-thirds of the cardinals' votes for two years until a Genoese legal scholar became Pope Innocent IV (1243-1254). He fled to Lyons and conferred upon the cardinals the privilege of wearing red as a sign of their willingness to shed their blood for the Church. Pope Innocent renewed the war, and finally famine and pestilence stimulated Friedrich to ask for absolution the next year. He agreed to restore church lands, free prisoners, forgive rebels, let the Pope settle the Lombard dispute, and satisfy every papal grievance. Later Friedrich changed his mind and was banned by the exiled Pope's council at Lyons in 1245. Friedrich ordered the Alpine passes closed to stop reinforcements from the Pope and devastated the region of Viterbo. Friedrich taxed ecclesiastics and attacked Milan. In Sicily a conspiracy to assassinate the Emperor failed and was punished, and the last Saracens were expelled from the island.
In 1243 Jews of Belitz near Berlin were burned to death in the first known massacre based on the allegation that they desecrated the Christian sacrament. The next year Duke Friedrich of Austria issued a decree protecting Jews from murder and assault with strict laws. Similar laws were adopted later in Hungary, Bohemia, Greater Poland, Meissen, Thuringia, and Silesia. Frequent massacres of Jews in Germany and France that were often based on erroneous allegations that they had murdered Christian children were brought to the attention of Pope Innocent IV, who issued a bull from Lyons in 1247 to contradict such baseless charges.
The imperial emissary Gebhard of Arnstein had compelled the Italian cities to accept the Emperor's endorsement of their podestas in 1238. In a revolution at Siena in 1240 the nobility and people established a ruling council of 24 that lasted for thirty years until Siena was forced to join the Guelf league. In 1246 Friedrich's illegitimate son Friedrich of Antioch became vicar-general of Tuscany and podesta of Florence, where he established his imperial administration. He was supported by the Ghibellines led by the Uberti family; but after a street brawl in 1248 the Guelfs withdrew to their castles in the mountains, and the angry Ghibellines destroyed 36 of their buildings in Florence. The next year Friedrich of Antioch captured the Guelfs' exile headquarters at Capraia, executing and imprisoning the garrison. While young Friedrich was away in 1250, the Guelfs attacked Figline.
Friedrich's imperial regent Heinrich Raspe, landgrave of Thuringia, was elected king but had little power and died in 1247 to be replaced by Count William of Holland, who won over Cologne. Friedrich held a diet at Cremona and married various relatives to powerful families. Pope Innocent sent William 25,000 silver marks and declared a crusade against Friedrich. When the Emperor's army was defeated at Parma in 1248, his immense imperial treasure was captured. Friedrich still refused to renounce the empire and accused the Pope of trying to poison him. By the next year William had conquered enough territory to be crowned at Aachen. Friedrich, suspecting that Peter de Vinea had joined the papal cause and was trying to poison him, had him blinded, and Peter committed suicide in prison. The struggle went on until Friedrich finally died of dysentery on December 13, 1250.
King Philip II had accepted Arthur, nephew of England's King John, as his vassal in Brittany in 1199 but then abandoned him by signing a peace treaty with John in 1200 at Le Goulet. In this agreement France gained Evrecin, the Vexin, and part of Berry, and Prince Louis was married to John's niece Blanche of Castile. John alienated the family of Lusignan when he married Isabella at Chinon in 1200. That year Pope Innocent III put France under interdict, because Philip would not take back Ingeborg as his wife. Count Renaud of Boulogne made peace with Philip and married his daughter to young Philip, son of Agnes and the French king. Yet John's forces continued to attack Lusignan castles in Aquitane in 1201 and ravaged the region of Tours. When John renewed his alliance with German king Otto of Brunswick, Philip betrothed his new daughter Marie to Arthur. After John failed to respond to Philip's summons to Paris in 1202, the French court condemned John as a defaulted vassal and gave his continental lands to Arthur, assuming he could conquer them; but John captured Arthur at Mirebeau. The young Arthur was never heard of again, and it was assumed that John had murdered him in 1203. That year Philip invaded Normandy and the next year took the stronghold that Richard had built at Gaillard, enabling him to complete his conquest of Normandy. In the next two years Philip invaded the Loire region and made a truce with John in 1206.
Philip had gained Champagne after Thibaut III died on crusade in 1201; his widow Blanche's son Thibaut IV became the king's ward. Philip made an alliance with Count Renaud of Boulogne by betrothing his infant son Philip Hurepel to Renaud's daughter Matilda. Flanders count Baldwin IX (r. 1194-1206) went on the fourth crusade in 1202 that took Constantinople, and he was elected Emperor in 1204; but two years later he was captured and then presumed dead. Philip renewed his attack south of the Loire in 1208 but had to withdraw because of sickness. According to the chronicler Guillaume de Breton, Philip claimed that he was defending southern churches from rapacious barons. Scottish chronicler Melrose recorded that in 1210 John despoiled the Jews in England, and King Philip ordered Jews in his realm imprisoned; but seven years later Philip's income from the Jews had increased greatly.
In 1210 Pope Innocent III wrote to Philip asking for 200 knights to fight Otto's imperial claims in Italy; but the French king only agreed to raise papal taxes because France was not in danger. Two years later Philip loaned Friedrich 20,000 marks, and both agreed not to make peace with Otto or John without the other's consent; Friedrich II was elected king in Germany a month later. When Renaud failed to regain lost fiefs from Philip, he became the ally of Otto and John. Matilda, widow of Flanders count Philip, provided 50,000 livres to Philip so that her nephew Ferrand, son of King Sancho of Portugal, could marry Joan of Flanders at Paris in 1212; but Prince Louis captured them to take by force Aire and Saint-Omer as part of the dowry he had lost to Count Baldwin and in the treaty of Peronne. Ferrand was welcomed as ruler in Ypres and Bruges; but he had to subdue Ghent, and he granted the city the privilege of annually choosing their aldermen.
In 1213 Pope Innocent III threatened England's King John with deposition and urged Philip to launch a crusade against him. Philip appointed his son Louis to lead the invasion of England. Philip reconciled himself to Queen Ingeborg in order to please the Pope; but John countered by also submitting to the Pope, promising the papal legate Pandulf that he would accept Stephen Langton as archbishop of Canterbury. Pandulf then told the French king he would be excommunicated if they invaded England. Flanders was dependent on the English wool trade and so sided with them. When Ferrand demanded his territory back, Philip attacked the Flemish resistance by taking over Ypres and Bruges while besieging Ghent. Bishop Goswin of Tournai sided with the French and excommunicated Ferrand. The French fleet was destroyed by a surprise attack at Damme in May 1213, and Philip ordered the remaining ships burned so that his enemies would not get them, making an invasion of England infeasible. Fighting continued in Flanders, which John was supporting with funds. The French took Tournai, Cassel, Lille, Bruges, and finally Ghent, and hostages were sent to Artesian communes.
John attacked the Loire valley in 1214 while Otto organized an army of the English, Flemish and German allies in the north. Although the armies each had about 20,000 men, the French may have had the strategic advantage at Bouvines in this critical battle that was fought contrary to chivalry on a Sunday. King Philip was unhorsed but was rescued and continued fighting; when Otto fled, the French triumphed, sending 130 knights to imprisonment; Ferrand was not released for a dozen years. In the south Philip made a five-year truce with the English king at Chinon, and John never returned to the continent. The triumphant Philip was hailed in Paris as France became a powerful kingdom with a centralized state. Philip dominated Joan in Flanders; their commerce with England increased after John died, as the Magna Carta guaranteed free trade. Philip had granted immunities to students at Paris in 1200, and by 1215 the university was fully organized. Philip provided thriving Paris with a central market, an aqueduct, new hospitals, new fortifications, and two paved roads to reduce the stench.
When English barons offered him the crown during their civil war with John, Philip's son Louis crossed the channel with an army in 1216. Twelve out of twenty English bishops supported Louis; but after John died, eleven of them returned to support young King Henry III. In September 1217 Louis was paid 10,000 marks to depart. King Philip had offered no assistance to his son in this adventure, and in 1220 he renewed his truce with England for four years. Philip II died in 1223 and was succeeded by Louis VIII. His first important act was to prohibit officials from recording debts owed to Jews, and he ordered the outstanding bonds of Jews confiscated. In 1224 Louis conquered southern Poitou, Périgord, Quercy, and Limousin from the English though they managed to retain Gascony. In Flanders Joan was challenged by a man claiming to be Baldwin IX in 1224; but he lost credibility with all but the common people after he was questioned by Louis VIII the next year. The false Baldwin was executed, and Joan paid Louis 20,000 livres. In the treaty of Melun in 1226 Joan paid a ransom of 50,000 livres to get back her husband Ferrand. Pope Honorius persuaded Louis to take up the cross against the Albigensians in 1226; but Louis succumbed to an epidemic that year and was succeeded by his son Louis IX.
Louis VIII had arranged for his younger sons to have apanages. Robert received Artois in 1237; Alphonse got Poitou, Saintonge, and Auvergne in 1241; after Jean died, Charles was given Anjou and Maine in 1246. As Louis IX was only twelve when he became king, his mother Blanche of Castile ruled as regent until 1234. French nobles resisted obeying Blanche, because she was a foreigner and a woman. She had brought up her son Louis very religiously, and he was surrounded by priests. Thibaud IV of Champagne sublimated his love for Blanche by writing songs, and he wavered between the two sides. Blanche raised funds for the crown with a confiscatory tax on the Jews in 1227. After a tavern brawl in Paris in 1229, the queen's archers were sent in to restore order and shot several young clerics. The university went on strike, and the masters left for two years until Blanche recognized the university's privileges and made the burgesses pay compensation to the injured students. A chair of theology was conferred on a Dominican in 1229, and two other chairs were already held by another Dominican and a Franciscan though secular masters still held the majority of chairs.
Poitou nobles led by La Marche count Hugues de Lusignan and Brittany count Pierre Mauclerc of Dreux formed a coalition with Toulouse count Raymond VII and appealed to Henry III of England. For the royals Marshal John Clement waged a ruthless campaign that devastated Champagne. Pierre Mauclerc received a heavy blow when the strong castle of Belleme was captured, and the Pope prohibited his marriage to the queen of Cyprus based on consanguinity. Blanche was helped by the papal legate Romano Frangipani, who got 100,000 livres transferred from the French Church to the crown, and he persuaded Raymond to give up land to the crown and the papacy in the Treaty of Paris in 1229. Raymond's daughter and heir Joan was to marry Blanche's son Alphonse. By then Thibaud was supporting the monarchy, and he and Philip Hurepel mediated a reconciliation between Matthew of Lorraine and Henry of Bar. Thibaud paid a fine of 1,000 silver marks to the archbishop of Lyons and agreed to go on crusade with 100 knights. In the treaty of Melun the king gained two castles as security, paying 1,000 livres rent, and a royal seneschalcy was established in Carcassonne. Peter Mauclerc went to England and did homage to Henry III for Brittany; but the English invasion was repelled, and Henry returned to England in October 1230.
Blanche charged the Archbishop of Rouen with taking timber for his residence. When he refused to accept her authority over him, she seized his temporalities. The archbishop then declared an interdict on the royal domains in his diocese until the papal legate got the Queen to give up the temporalities. Another conflict occurred between them over the election of an abbess in 1232, and it was only settled by the Pope two years later. In 1234 Louis IX attained his majority and married Margaret of Provence. The kingdom became more peaceful as Philip Hurepel died, Peter Mauclerc gave up Brittany to his son John the Red, and the controversial Thibaud became occupied ruling the kingdom of Navarre. The barons did object to the prelates' claiming complete jurisdiction in their courts; but in 1235 the king prohibited their vassals from being judged in ecclesiastical courts for civil questions, and he threatened to seize the property of bishops who used the weapon of excommunication. In 1246 a league of barons led by the duke of Burgundy and the counts of Brittany, Angouleme, and St. Pol limited ecclesiastical courts to cases of usury, heresy, and marriage, and many barons continued to enforce this even though Pope Innocent IV denounced the league.
An uprising in Narbonne in 1237 was quickly suppressed. The next year Pope Gregory IX persuaded the kings of France and England to renew their truce for five more years. Beaucaire seneschal Pierre of Athies abused his authority between 1239 and 1241. In 1240 the excommunicated Raymond Trencavel tried to revive the Albigensian resistance and invaded Languedoc, and they were confronted by Carcassonne seneschal William of Les Orme, the Archbishop of Narbonne, and the Bishop of Toulouse. The Count of Toulouse remained neutral, and Trencavel had 33 priests massacred; but when royal troops approached, Trencavel fled across the Pyrenees. Many partisans were hanged, and some Carcassonne families lost their lands. La Marche count Hugues le Brun resented having to do homage to the King's brother Alphonse, because Hugues was married to the haughty Isabel, widow of King John. The Poitevin barons rebelled in 1242 and were weakly supported by 300 knights from England. Henry III retreated, and Hugues, Isabel, and their children had to beg for mercy from Louis IX. Raymond of Toulouse seized Narbonne and Béziers but also made peace, promising to fight heresy. In 1243 Louis and Henry agreed on another truce for five years.
King Louis IX obtained relics believed from the passion of Jesus from Emperor Baldwin II in Constantinople by paying his debts for him in 1239. The splendid chapel at Sainte-Chapelle was constructed to house them and was dedicated in 1248. A Jew, who left his religion and was baptized as Nicholas Donin, sent from France to Pope Gregory IX a tract with 35 charges against the Talmud. In 1239 the Pope ordered all copies of the Talmud confiscated pending a trial before Christian authorities. Louis reacted to the papal directive in 1240 by having Nicholas prosecute four prominent rabbis on the Talmud. The queen mother presided, and the bishops judged that the Talmud insulted the Christian religion. Two years later 24 cart-loads of books were collected and burned at Paris.
In December 1244 Louis IX was seriously ill and vowed to go on a crusade if he recovered. Henry III agreed to continue the truce but did not volunteer to take the cross. Louis raised taxes and cut government expenses to raise enormous sums for the war that ended up costing about 1,500,000 livres or six years of annual revenue. About half of the crusading army of about 20,000 soldiers with nearly 2,000 knights was paid directly by the king, who also gave loans to help others. To those regions not providing their quota of taxes Louis sent Dominicans and Fransciscans to investigate, resulting in numerous reforms of local corruption.
Blanche was declared regent, and the crusading army left France in 1248. After Raymond VII of Toulouse died the next year, she had to enforce the succession to his daughter Joan, wife of Blanche's son Alphonse, who was away on the crusade. When Louis was captured by the Muslims, they jeered him for allowing Jews to remain in his kingdom. When the French king was released, he issued an edict banishing Jews; but Queen Blanche did not enforce it. Difficulties on the crusade prompted Louis to appeal for more help. In 1251 in northern France and Flanders peasants responded and were led by the monk James, who had fled a Cistercian monastery and was called the "Master of Hungary." Thousands of these "shepherds" marched toward Paris and were supplied by Blanche; but they resented the nobles who had stayed home from the crusade and attacked Jews and even clerics. After disorders in Orleans they entered Bourges without permission of the archbishop. Queen Blanche ordered the rioting stopped, and the bailli had the Master of Hungary and other leaders hanged. Simon de Montfort had others arrested to disperse the group near Bordeaux. Blanche became ill and died in November 1252, but several months went by before Louis heard the news. Her advising council of bishops governed in the name of ten-year-old Louis as the king's brother Alphonse presided. He and Charles had returned from the crusade after being ransomed in 1250.
Flanders count William of Dampierre had also returned from the crusade, but he was killed in a tournament in 1251. Joan had left Flanders countess Margaret a debt of 164,000 pounds, and in the next twelve years Margaret borrowed at least twice that much fighting her Avesnes sons on behalf of her Dampierre sons. Margaret gained 150,000 pounds selling land and raised another 200,000 from five cities. The Avesnes claimed territories outside of France and were supported by William of Holland, recently proclaimed King of the Romans by Pope Innocent IV. Guy and John of Dampierre had French allies; but they were defeated and imprisoned in 1253. Margaret appealed to Charles of Anjou, who invaded Hainault to make his claim; but when Louis IX returned the next year, he persuaded his brother Charles to withdraw and imposed the settlement he had previously arranged in 1246. That year Charles married the heiress Beatrice, and Provence became part of France.
Louis IX instituted a series of reforms beginning in 1254 with new ordinances. He delegated to his officers the administration of justice and the collection of taxes. They were forbidden to accept gifts or loans in order to avoid favoritism. The top officials (baillis and seneschals) had to render accounts and were not allowed to acquire land in their jurisdictions even for their children by marriage or ecclesiastical benefices. The right of hospitality for officials on tour was limited, and they were not allowed to make any levies for their own use. The sale of lesser offices was also prohibited. Public vices such as blasphemy, gambling, prostitution, drunkenness, and brawling were suppressed. Louis often over-ruled judgments if he believed they were unjust, and he punished barons who executed someone without a trial or by a wrong judgment. Land was well cultivated, and peasants prospered. As economic conditions improved, capitalists tended to take control of municipal governments though the statutes of the guilds were still recorded.
Under Louis IX criticism did occur. After Dominicans refused to join a strike at the university in 1253, William of Saint-Amour, a doctor of the University of Paris, questioned the King's devotions to the mendicant friars and lost his position. His treatise De Periculis was condemned in 1256, and he went into exile. As part of the university the Cistercians opened a college in 1246, the Premonstratensians in 1252, and the Cluniacs in 1261. Robert of Sorbon founded a college for poor students which was generously supported by the king, who also aided the mendicant orders. Before leaving Palestine King Louis had ordered the Jews expelled and their possessions seized, and this was confirmed in an ordinance of 1258. Skilled artisans were excepted, and the ordinance was extended to some Christian usurers from Normandy. In 1261 Louis followed the Pope's advice by forbidding festivals and tournaments, impoverishing jongleurs. Concerned that the mayors of the communes were controlled by urban oligarchies, in 1262 Louis issued two ordinances regulating the election of mayors and requiring the accounts of 35 communes to be submitted to royal auditors. The integrity of the King also made sure that the mints supplied a solid currency.
After the failed crusade Louis IX tried to maintain peaceful relations. His arbitration ended the conflict in Flanders with his "Dit of Péronne" in 1256. In 1258 he prohibited all warfare in his kingdom, banned the carrying of weapons, and outlawed arson and the harming of draft animals. The next year judicial duels were abolished. The Treaty of Corbeil in 1258 established the Pyrenees as the border between Aragon and France except that Jaime I retained Roussillon and Montpellier. This treaty was sealed by the marriage of Louis' son Philip and the Aragonese princess Isabelle, and Queen Margaret got Jaime to yield his rights in Provence to her. The next year Louis finalized a treaty with Henry III at Paris that paid the English king enough for 500 knights for two years for renouncing any claim to Normandy, Anjou, Touraine, Maine, and Poitou. Henry swore fealty to France for Gascony; but some historians have criticized Louis for giving Henry the dioceses of Limoges, Cahors, and Périgueux except for the lands held by those bishops. Louis also tried to arbitrate a dispute between Henry III and his barons with the Mise of Amiens in 1164; but it favored the king, and Simon de Montfort refused to agree. When a small war broke out between the conflicting feudal rights of Bar, Luxemburg, Champagne, and Choiseul in 1266, Pope Clement IV asked King Louis to arbitrate, and it was eventually decided by his chamberlain Peter of Villebéon two years later.
Louis was criticized by barons for spending several hours a day in prayer and hearing masses and sermons; but he simply noted that few would object if he spent twice the time in games and hunting. The saintly Louis gave regularly to the poor and attended the needs of some beggars personally. He founded the hospice of the Quinze Vingts to serve 300 blind people. He helped poor women avoid prostitution by helping them to join the Daughters of God. In his daily life he was frugal and avoided luxury, but he could be extravagant on special occasions and spent 13,758 livres when his son Philip was knighted in 1267.
Louis IX's ambitious brother Charles of Anjou invaded Sicily in 1266, defeating and killing Manfred. Charles restored free elections to the churches but had to take money from Sicily for the Holy See and to pay back loans. Pope Clement IV persuaded Charles to keep his promise and resign from the Roman senate. Yet in 1268 Charles had the last Hohenstaufen ruler Conradin beheaded. His wife Beatrice having died in 1267, Charles extended his power by marrying Margaret, daughter of the late Count of Nevers and grand-daughter of Hugh of Burgundy. Charles even planned to help Emperor Baldwin II reconquer Constantinople in exchange for Greek territories; but this was blocked when the Doge of Venice made a treaty with the Greek emperor. Also revolts in Sicily kept Charles occupied though he made diplomatic gains with the King of Serbia and the Tsar of Bulgaria and negotiated marriages with the King of Hungary. Meanwhile he prepared a fleet to invade Morea in Greece.
King Louis decided to go on another crusade in 1267 and began administering funds for the Church not only in his own realms but also in the dioceses of Cambrai, Metz, Toul, Verdun, and Liege. The French church had recently contributed a hundredth for the Holy Land and a tenth for Sicily, and many now rebelled against another tenth for a crusade. Yet all the great barons and most of his knights volunteered. Charles urged his brother Louis to go to Tunis in order to protect Sicily, and Louis had supported the Sicilian expedition as a preparation for a crusade; but Louis probably agreed on Tunis because the king there had indicated a desire to convert to Christianity. In 1269 the Dominican convert Paul the Christian persuaded Louis to require all Jews to wear badges of red or yellow on the front and back of their garments. Jews in northern France submitted, but in Provence prominent Jews got the law rescinded until Philip III reintroduced it in 1271. A large fleet of crusaders arrived at Tunis in July 1270; but the Tunisian ruler did not convert, and disease devastated the Christian camp, causing the death of Louis the next month.
Philip III (r. 1270-1285) succeeded his father Louis as king while on the crusade in Tunis. Several thousand men and the money the Muslims had paid him to depart were lost in a storm. Philip took over Lyons from imperial authorities that were not controlling disturbances. By the time he got back to Paris five of his relatives were dead, including his wife and child. Special taxes were raised for his coronation in 1271 and for his new queen in 1275. Philip tried to get elected King of the Romans and gave the Comtat-Venaissin with its capital Avignon over to the papal government in 1274. Unlike his saintly father, Philip allowed judicial combat and delighted in tournaments.
After the 1274 death of King Henry of Navarre, who was also Count of Champagne, Philip III gave Henry's widow Blanche of Artois refuge at his court and arranged the marriage of her daughter Jeanne to his son Philip. French armies occupied Navarre; they were resented and had to suppress a revolt in 1276. When Blanche married Edward's brother Edmund, earl of Lancaster, Champagne was governed by him until Philip married Jeanne in 1284. A family dispute over Provence was settled when Charles of Anjou was allowed to keep it and his mother was given income from Anjou. To support his military campaigns in the south Philip called upon men who previously had been exempt from such service. The French government was managed by chamberlain Pierre de la Broce until he alienated Philip's second wife and was hanged without public explanation in 1278. The treaty of Amiens in 1279 recognized Edward's possession of Agenais.
Countess Margaret of Flanders (1244-1278) caused a crisis in 1270 when she confiscated English property, and within four years Flemish merchants, who had been perhaps the most prosperous in Europe, had lost most of their carrying trade. Workers had gone on strike in Douai as early as 1245. In 1274 weavers and fullers left Ghent to go to Brabant. Margaret replaced the 39 of Ghent in 1275; but after she abdicated to her son Guy of Dampierre, a parliament restored them in 1280. When aldermen and Count Guy issued wage limits in 1280 for Bruges, aroused mobs chased out or imprisoned the Count's officers. Order was restored the next year, and they had to pay 4,000 pounds for the property damage. Rebellions also occurred in Ypres and Douai. When another rebellion broke out in Bruges during the summer of 1281, the Flanders count had five hostages beheaded. Assemblies of more than ten persons were prohibited, and the 1280 law remained. Some craftsmen emigrated to England and Italy, where skilled workers were exempt from taxes. Italian trade was greatly enhanced after the first Genoese voyage to Flanders in 1277.
Tallages on the Jews starting in 1281 helped Philip III pay for increasing expenses. After the Sicilian revolt against the harsh rule of Charles of Anjou in 1282, the French Pope Martin IV (1281-1285) excommunicated Pedro III of Aragon and proclaimed a crusade against him. Assemblies of magnates at Bourges and Paris organized a campaign, but early in 1285 both Charles and Martin died. By the time the large French army had crossed the Pyrenees and besieged Girona, supplies were exhausted. After the French navy was defeated at Islas Hormigas, the army was desperate. Disease spread, and on the retreat Philip III died in October 1285. He was succeeded by his young son Philip IV (r. 1285-1314), called the Fair.
In 1286 Philip IV purchased the county of Chartres, which the cathedral chapter had put under interdict because the prévot had arrested one of their men. When Philip took over Poitou, the bishop complained that the king did not have the right of regalia in Poitiers and appealed to the archbishop of Bordeaux. In 1288 the bishop refused to appear before the royal High Court for refusing investiture and was condemned by default. Both Chartres and the Poitiers bishop appealed to Pope Nicholas IV, who ordered an investigation of both cases in 1289. The next year a compromise was worked out by Cardinal Benedict Gaetani (the future Boniface VIII) that revoked all actions taken against royal officials and residences of the royal domain. French prelates met at Sainte-Genevieve, and at their request Philip issued an ordinance clarifying his rights and privileges while forbidding interference in ecclesiastical jurisdiction, exempting clerics from tallage, allowing prelates to buy alienated tithes, and prohibiting royal officials from holding court on Church lands. The king and not the Pope had settled the case, and after 1290 appeals from the secular courts of the bishops went to Parliament.
When the Flemish complained about taxes in 1288, Philip IV installed an officer in Ghent to control Count Guy. Two years later Guy issued new privileges to English merchants and tried to negotiate an alliance. After Rochelle was attacked in 1293, King Philip demanded the Gascon perpetrators be made to pay restitution, and after failed negotiations he ordered the mayor and leading citizens of Bayonne arrested. Constable Raoul de Nesles led the French army that took over Gascony while Edward was busy fighting in Wales. The English were pushed back to Bayonne, Bourg, and Blaye by Charles of Valois in 1295 and by Robert of Artois in 1296. Philip gained allies by granting money-fiefs to the count of Luxembourg, the dauphin of Vienne, the bishop of Metz, the count of Holland, and the count of Hainault. The Aquitane war was stopped by the truce of Vyve-Saint-Bavon in 1297.
In 1294 Edward revoked his safe conduct to Flemish merchants, who were subjects of the French king. Philip IV raised money from the Church as provincial councils granted him a tenth for two years. Also in 1294 Count Guy arranged for his daughter Philippina to marry prince Edward of England. Philip summoned Guy before parliament and imprisoned him and two of his sons for four months until he renounced his agreement with England and sent Philippina to Paris, where she died in 1306. Guy was getting some of his own medicine, for he had previously incarcerated the Count of Holland. Guy promised to enforce the French trade embargo against England and in 1295 was allowed to keep the property confiscated from violators. Philip made more concessions the next year by freeing Flemish cloth from foreign competition and declaring a two-year moratorium on debts of Flemish burghers and on Count Guy's debt to France.
In February 1296 Pope Boniface VIII issued the bull Clericis Laicos forbidding lay taxation of the clergy without papal authorization. The French king had to concede more privileges to the Church in order to gain another tenth that year, and in August he issued an ordinance prohibiting the export of arms, horses, war equipment, and money, the ban on gold and silver especially affecting the Pope. Philip took more control over Flanders especially after Guy tried to annex Avesnes Hainault from Valenciennes. Guy was tried in Paris and fined. In January 1297 archbishops of Rheims, Sens, and Rouen asked papal permission to aid King Philip, and the next month Boniface authorized a grant. A council at Paris then gave Philip a double tenth for as long as the war lasted. Pope Boniface himself was under attack in Rome by the Colonna family, and in July 1297 his bull Etsi de statu allowed the King to ask for subsidies from the clergy without his consent; the Pope also pleased Philip by canonizing his grandfather Louis IX.
After Count Guy of Dampierre returned to Flanders, he renounced his fealty to Philip and formed an alliance with England's Edward. In 1297 Guy issued a comprehensive code of laws that became known as the Great Charter of Ghent. A French army led by Charles of Valois invaded western Flanders in June 1297, and troops under Robert of Artois defeated the Flemish at Furnes. Count Guy retained Ypres, Douai, and Ghent, where he resided with Edward. The Flemish were divided between the Lilies who supported France and the Claws that sided with the lion depicted on the Flemish count's coat of arms. In October 1297 a truce was agreed to last until 1300, and Edward withdrew from Flanders. In 1298 marriages were arranged between Edward and Philip's sister Margaret and between prince Edward and Philip's daughter Isabella. That year Boniface began arbitrating the Flemish war as a private person, and the next year the Colonnas fled to France as the Pope had Palestrina razed, plowed, and sown with salt. When the truce expired, a new French army led by Charles of Valois took over the remaining part of Flanders as Count Guy and his son Robert de Béthune surrendered to honorable captivity in royal castles.
In Paris, where the population had tripled in the 13th century to nearly 200,000, the Seine was being polluted by the slaughter of animals. In 1293 Parisians killed 188,522 sheep, 30,346 oxen, 19,604 calves, and 30,784 pigs. By 1300 only about 32 million acres of forests remained in France, and this is less than existed in the year 2000. Wood became so expensive at Douai in northern France that poor families could only afford to rent a wooden coffin for funerals. Since the reign of Philip II the royal domain of France had expanded greatly though independent duchies still existed in Burgundy, Brittany, and Gascony. The population of France had increased rapidly to about twenty million by 1300.
Pedro II (r. 1196-1213) of Aragon went to Rome in 1204 to be crowned by Pope Innocent III; as his vassal Pedro promised to defend the Catholic faith and prosecute heretics. By the next year the barons had compelled Pedro to stabilize the coinage, abandon the hated bovatge tax, and agreed to consult with them on comital vicar appointments. In 1212 the Christian kings Alfonso VIII (r. 1158-1214) of Castile, Sancho VII (r. 1194-1234) of Navarre, and Pedro II, supported also by troops from Leon and Portugal, defeated the Almohads at Las Navas de Tolosa with a reported 100,000 Muslims killed, making Andalusia vulnerable. The Christians gained enormous spoils as they plundered cities in the region. Pedro was killed the next year fighting to defend Raymond of Toulouse against the Albigensian crusaders at Muret. Between 1212 and 1214 Alfonso VIII founded the first Spanish university at Palencia.
Pedro's son Jaime I (r. 1213-1276) won the throne of Aragon by defeating his uncles in a civil war that lasted until 1227. The next year Jaime gained Urgell by making its heiress Aurembiaix his mistress. A Cortes assembled at Barcelona decided to besiege Majorca, and Jaime I entered the capital on the last day of 1229. Minorca surrendered in 1232, and the Archbishop of Tarragona led the Catalan nobles that conquered Ibiza in 1235. After Valencia surrendered in 1238, many Muslims were incorporated into the Aragon kingdom. Jaime guaranteed local self-government and tolerance of Islam, though Muslims were expelled from the city of Valencia to its suburbs. Jaime was called the Conqueror and was reported to have fought thirty battles against the Moors. Yet he was merciful to those who surrendered and tolerated their religion and civil laws, though he founded nearly two hundred Christian churches in the conquered territories. When Sancho VII died childless, Navarre chose his nephew Count Thibaut IV (r. 1234-1253) of Champagne as king, and Navarre grew closer to French culture.
When Alfonso VIII died in 1214, his son Enrique was only ten. His mother Berenguela acceded to Count Alvaro Nuñez de Lara, whose rapacious governing resulted in the dean of Toledo excommunicating him, and Enrique died from an accident in 1217. Fernando III gained Castile (1217-1252) from his mother Berenguela, but they had to defeat the towns holding to Alvaro and fight off an attack from his father Alfonso IX (r. 1188-1230), who was divorced from Berenguela by reason of consanguinity. She arranged her son Fernando's marriage to Beatriz of Swabia in 1219. Berenguela's sister Blanche married Louis IX of France, and Fernando's son Alfonso married the daughter of Jaime I of Aragon. Alfonso IX of Leon founded the University of Salamanca in 1220.
Fernando III made an alliance with Muslim governor of Baeza in 1224 and the next year invaded the territory of Cordoba. He was given a colony for Castilians at Marrakesh in Morocco when he helped reinstate al-Ma'mun as Caliph of the Almohads. In 1228 Muslims drove the Almohads out of Cordoba, and ibn Hud sent envoys to the 'Abbasid caliphs in Baghdad, bringing many Andalusian Muslims back into the Sunni faith. Almohad rule on the peninsula ended when al-Ma'mun left Seville and moved back to Marrakesh later that year. There al-Ma'mun defeated his Almohad rival, and allying with the Khuli tribe, the Hintata leaders were massacred. In 1229 the people of Seville accepted the authority of ibn Hud and the 'Abbasid caliphate; but the next year he was defeated by Leon and the knights of Santiago. After Fernando III inherited Leon from his father in 1230, it would remain part of the kingdom of Castile. When Fernando took Cordoba in 1236, the many inhabitants were allowed to depart with only what they could carry. Jaen fell in 1246 after a siege of more than a year. The king of Granada helped powerful Castile besiege Seville in 1247, and the next year Fernando forced 300,000 Muslims to leave Seville as he took over the city. Tribute-paying Granada was now the last Muslim kingdom on the Spanish peninsula. Fernando was proud that he never attacked a Christian prince during his long reign.
A year after Archbishop Absalon died, Knud's brother Valdemar Sejr became king of Denmark in 1202. He was called Victorious for expanding the realm, conquering the region around Lübeck to the Oder-Vistula. The king and Archbishop Andrew forced Estonian islanders to submit in 1206. King Valdemar II convened the first hof composed of nobles and prelates. By recognizing Friedrich II as Emperor in 1214 Valdemar gained recognition of Denmark's provinces in Germany. This caused Otto and his allies to invade Holstein and take Hamburg, and they were supported by King Valdemar's rival, Bishop Valdemar, now of Bremen; but the bishop was driven into a cloister while the Pope appointed and protected another bishop.
King Valdemar also increased the Danish empire by launching a crusade into northern Estonia with a new order of knights called the Brothers of the Sword in 1219. Valdemar was captured by a German vassal, Count Henry of Schwerin, in 1223. The Brothers of the Sword and the bishop of Riga then seized part of Estonia while Count Adolf and the princes of northern Germany returned to Holstein and their lands. The regent Albert refused to pay 50,000 marks of silver for Valdemar but was defeated at Molln in 1225. To gain his freedom Valdemar had to give back the conquered territory except for Rügen and Estonia but including Lübeck, and he was defeated by German princes in Holstein trying to recapture it in 1227 when his Ditmarsh soldiers went over to the other side. The Sword-Brothers took Reval in 1227 but had to give it to the Teutonic Knights in the treaty of Stensby in 1238. However, Valdemar was able to keep his Estonian possessions because of his 200 ships. A papal legate persuaded Valdemar to join the Teutonic Order's crusade against Russia in 1240 that ended in defeat two years later.
Valdemar II had his son Erik crowned in 1232 and gave his sons Abel and Christopher dukedoms. Valdemar promulgated a law code for Jutland before he died in 1241. When Erik became king, he gave his duchy of Slesvig to his brother Abel; but they quarreled when Erik tried to win back Holstein, which Abel defended for that count. Erik also aroused the enmity of Sweden by attacking Lübeck, and his brothers followed Abel's example in refusing to do homage to King Erik. When Slesvig was taken, Abel fled to his allies; but the Duke of Saxony and the Margrave of Brandenberg mediated a truce in the civil war. For a campaign into Livonia to recover territory Erik laid a tax of a silver penny on every plow in his kingdom, giving him the name Plow-penny, though in Skane many resisted paying. This expedition in Estonia accomplished little, but Erik then attacked Holstein. Near Slesvig Erik was captured and beheaded by his brother Abel in 1250. Abel became king and averted war by giving Holstein to its count and Livonia to the Teutonic Knights. Abel restored annual meetings of the estates and improved the laws; but he was killed by Frisians while trying to enforce tax collection in western Slesvig after ruling only two years.
After Norwegian king Sverrir's death in 1202 his son Haakon II recalled the bishops and others from exile, and the interdict was removed from Norway; but Haakon died on the first day of 1204, perhaps of poison. His nearest heir was four-year-old Guthorm; but his election caused the Bagler party to organize around Erling Steinvegg, and they were supported by Valdemar II of Denmark. Erling was also proclaimed king in 1204, and the same year Guthorm died suspiciously. The Thing elected Inge Baardson king; but the battles between the Birchlegs and the Baglers continued. Erling died in 1207, and the Baglers chose as their king Philip, nephew of Bishop Nicholas. The next year peace was negotiated, and Philip swore fealty to Inge and was made earl of Viken and the Uplands, marrying Sverrir's daughter Christina.
When Inge died in 1217, the Birchlegs elected Sverrir's grandson Haakon as king. Rivalry with Earl Skule was meliorated when the king was betrothed to the Earl's daughter Margreta in 1219. Four years later Earl Skule exchanged the southern part of Norway for the northern third of the country. Civil war erupted again after Skule was proclaimed king in 1239, but he and his men were trapped and massacred the following year. Young Haakon IV (r. 1217-1263) modernized the government by appointing a chancellor and royal council. Blood feuds and ordeals by fire were prohibited. Money was spent building monasteries, churches, a hospital for lepers, and a palace at Bergen with a wall around it.
Sverker II, son of the Goth Charles, was king of Sweden from 1196 to 1210 according to a compact made between the Swedes and the Goths. He extended privileges to the church, donating property to the church of Uppsala in 1200. After Birger Brosa died in 1202, revolt erupted. Three years later in a battle at Elgaros three of Knut's sons were killed by Sverker's royal army, and Erik fled to Norway. A few years later Erik Knutsson returned with forces strong enough to cause Sverker to retreat to Denmark. Their king Valdemar II supplied Sverker with an army, but they were defeated at Lena in 1208. Sverker went back to Denmark and appealed to Pope Innocent III, who threatened Erik with a ban. Sverker returned to Sweden with a Danish army again, but he was defeated and killed in 1210. That year Erik was the first Swedish king known to have been crowned by an archbishop. He ruled for ten years in peace by promising that he would be succeeded by Sverker's son John, who also ruled peacefully but for only two years.
Erik III (r. 1222-1250) was only six years old when he began his reign. In 1229 Erik's army was defeated by those proclaiming Knut the Tall, and Erik fled to Denmark until Knut died in 1232. The Folkung jarl Ulf administered the government. In 1237 Pope Gregory IX ordered Swedish bishops to lead a crusade against the pagan Tavasti in Finland, and Birger Magnusson led the invasion. The Swedes expanded territory into Finland and along the eastern Baltic coast; but they were stopped before the Neva River by the Russians led by Prince Alexander of Novgorod in 1240. Upland peasants revolted in 1247 but were put down and punished with heavier taxes. Holmger, son of Knut the Tall, tried to claim the throne, but he was captured and beheaded the next year. The papal legate Bishop William of Sabina visited Sweden and gained independence for the Church with ecclesiastical elections replacing royal appointments; celibacy was recommended but resisted as many church positions had become hereditary. Folkung family magnate Birger Magnusson replaced Ulf as jarl in 1248 and negotiated a treaty with Norway's Haakon in which each country agreed not to give refuge to the enemies of the other, and King Haakon's son agreed to marry Birger's daughter.
In Iceland family feuds starting around 1200 wiped out some
of the families, and with limited resources the economy stagnated.
Bishop Gudmund Arason (1203-1237) engaged in many conflicts with
chieftains on behalf of the Church, and he also strove to help
the poor. In 1208 some of the bishop's men killed his opponent
Kolbeinn Tumason in a skirmish. At times Gudmund was held in confinement.
From the time he became law-speaker in 1215, much of Iceland's
history revolved around the power struggles of its great historian
Snorri Sturluson. Saemund Jonsson had conflicts with traders over
prices; his son Deacon Pall was resented by traders in Bergen
and drowned. Saemund's brother Orm was killed by Greenland traders
in 1218 when he was gathering timber from the Westman islands.
By 1224 Snorri was the richest man in Iceland; but he was often
opposed by his nephew Sturla Sighvatsson, who was killed battling
Gizur Thorvaldsson in 1238. Norwegian king Haakon IV sent Gizur
as his commissioner, and his men murdered Snorri in 1241.
Snorri's son Oraekja and Sturla Thordarson went to avenge Snorri's
murder, but Gizur had the case placed before Norwegian king Haakon.
Oraekja declined; but Gizur eventually captured and exiled him,
and Sturla Thordarson swore allegiance to Kolbeinn the Young.
Haakon sent Thord Kakali Sighvatsson to Iceland, and he gained
enough forces to challenge Kolbeinn in Iceland's biggest naval
battle in 1244. Kolbeinn agreed to let King Haakon settle the
dispute but died the next year. In 1246 Thord also came into conflict
with the rival chief Brand in Iceland's worst land battle; but
Gizur persuaded them to let King Haakon arbitrate. While Thord
gained ground, Haakon sent two sons of Saemund Jonsson to Iceland
in 1251.
Hungarian king Andrew II (r. 1205-1235) used German knights to defend the eastern frontier of Transylvania against the Kumans from 1211 until he expelled the Order for disobedience in 1225. Andrew provoked revolt with his extravagance and favoritism, and in 1222 he had to sign the significant Golden Bull that acknowledged various rights in 31 articles. All future kings of Hungary would swear to this national charter. The king promised the following: to imprison no noble without a trial before himself and the count-palatine, to levy no taxes on the estates of nobles or ecclesiastics, to accept tithes in kind instead of money, to forbid foreigners to own land, and to protect people disobeying illegal orders. No one was to be compelled to serve outside the country unless at royal expense. Counts and other royal officers could be removed for misconduct, and their positions were no longer hereditary. In 1231 another Golden Bull established an annual meeting for the king and nobles, and an article forbidding Jews and Muslims from holding public office was added to the charter.
Andrew's son Bela IV (r. 1235-1270) faced the invasion of the Mongols as 40,000 Kumans were pushed into Hungary by the Mongols in 1239. Bela turned to Jewish agents for aid and adopted the protective laws of Austria's Friedrich. The skilled army of Khan Batu, using gun-powder invented by the Chinese, killed many thousands of the Hungarian army in 1241, though the Croats stopped the invasion near Fiume on the Dalmatian coast. King Bela fled to Austria and had to cede territory to the Austrian duke Friedrich, and in rebuilding the fortifications of the country many magnates became more independent as 34 of the 55 new castles were not royal ones. The depopulation provided more opportunities for the German immigrants. Bela fought to regain the territories from Austria, and Friedrich was killed. The Austrian succession was disputed by Hungary and Bohemia but was resolved as King Premysl Ottokar II married Bela's daughter Constance.
In 1212 Emperor Friedrich II recognized Bohemia as his fief, but its king Ottokar I (r. 1197-1230) became an imperial elector. Bishop Andrew of Prague (1214-1224) claimed church immunity from all laws and even taxes while attempting to enforce tithing on all Bohemia. His policy was unpopular, and he fled to Rome; he returned in 1222 but was driven out again and died in Rome two years later. Bohemia prospered and grew with German immigration. The feudal power of the castles declined as landowners became wealthy. Yet Germans built walls around their settlements, and other cities and nobles fortified their castles. German immigration continued to increase during the reign of Wenceslas (r. 1230-1253) and in the second half of the century. Colonizing in groups, they brought German law with them. During the reign of Wenceslas I the use of family names began in Bohemia. As a royal council advised the king, government became more centralized. Hostility between Bohemia and Austria paused during the Mongol invasion as the Duke of Silesia was defeated by the Tartars at Liegnitz in 1241. Wenceslas managed to defend Bohemia, but Moravia was ravaged by the Mongols.
In Poland Leszek I (r. 1202-1227) joined Cracow with his province of Sandomierz and his brother's Kujawia and Mazovia into what was called Lesser Poland. Roman Mstislavich added Galicia (Halich) to his Volhynia; but after refusing to do homage to Leszek, he was defeated and killed in 1205. A civil war followed and was aggravated by the intervention of Hungary. Dominicans were given a charter in 1223. The death of Leszek in 1227 brought about another war over the succession. When the crusading Dobrzyn Brotherhood that Leszek's brother Conrad of Mazovia founded was almost wiped out in 1224, he appealed to the Teutonic Knights, who were given territory on the frontier of Kujawia in 1228. Their crusade accelerated four years later when seven Polish dukes led soldiers into Livonia. From 1241 Prince Svantopelk of Pomerania waged war for a dozen years against the German knights and the Poles. Mongols invaded and devastated Poland in 1241 before retreating to Russia.
In Kiev Vsévolod III (r. 1176-1212) named his younger son Yuri as his successor; but his son Constantine and his allies defeated Yuri in a civil war by 1217. However, after Constantine died the next year, Yuri governed until 1237. Yuri led the campaign against the Volga Bulgarians and founded Nijni-Novgorod in 1221; but southern Russia was beyond his control as it was raided by Petchenegs, Poles, and Hungarians.
Roman Mstislavich (r. 1199-1205) ruled Volhynia and was aided by Hungarian soldiers sent by Casimir in the conquest of Galicia, fighting off Kumans and Lithuanians. Roman also extended his dominion over Kiev, which was sacked in 1203 by the Polovtsi mercenaries of the Chernigov Olgoviches. According to the Polish bishop Kadloubek, Roman promised to pardon the boyard aristocrats; but when they returned, he had them executed and confiscated their property, arguing that to eat honey in peace one must first kill the bees. After Roman was killed for not doing homage to Poland, Galicia suffered conflict for many years until it was conquered about 1238 by Roman's son Daniel, who governed Volhynia (r. 1205-1264). This region was subjugated by the Mongols in 1240 though Galicia retained most of its independence. Daniel invaded Prussia with the Polish dukes Semovit and Boleslav; but this drove the Lithuanian Mindaugas into an alliance with the Germans. Daniel was the only Russian ever to be crowned king by a legate of the Pope, which occurred in 1253. Volhynia and Galicia were governed by Daniel's son Leo until 1301. Mongols led by Khan Tulubugha did cause devastation when they marched through Galicia in 1282 on their way to Poland.
An army of Volhynians, Galicians, Polovtsians, and Kumans tried to stop invading Mongols led by Subatai at the river Kalka in 1223; but they were badly defeated, and many Russian princes were captured and put to death. The Khan Batu conquered the Volga Bolgary in 1236, destroyed Ryazan, Rostov, and Suzdalian towns the next year, and defeated the northern princes in 1238. Batu approached Novgorod but turned south. Yaroslav II, the only remaining son of Vsévolod III, was confirmed as Grand Prince by Batu; but when he went to visit the court of the Grand Khan in 1246, he was either poisoned or died returning. The Mongols plundered Suzdal again and southern Russia in 1239. The next year after their envoys to Kiev were killed, they destroyed Kiev, killing or enslaving all the inhabitants. Although Batu went home for a succession conference in 1242, much of Russia was under Mongol sovereignty for more than two centuries. About 1260 the Tatars established their capital at Itil (near modern Volgograd). The Mongols promoted commerce and increased the power of the princes by making them responsible for collecting taxes, and occasional resistance was punished. A western chief named Nokhai became independent of the khans of Sarai about 1260 and even took control of Sarai near the end of the century.
Independent Novgorod expelled Prince Yaroslav three times; but he returned in 1225 and helped them survive famine and fire. In 1227 he sent priests to baptize Karelians; but in 1237 Pope Gregory IX was told the Tavastians had rejected Christianity, and he proclaimed a crusade against them. Yaroslav succeeded his brother George II in Suzdal as Grand Prince in 1238 and was replaced at Novgorod by his son Alexander. While other Russians were being attacked by Mongols, Alexander led Novgorod in victory over the invading Swedes in 1240 by the river Neva (earning him the name Nevsky). The independent people of Novgorod dismissed Alexander; but they called him back when the Teutonic knights besieged Pskov and established a fort to control trade. Alexander captured the fort, and in 1142 his army relieved Pskov and defeated the Germans on the ice of Lake Peipus. Alexander made peace and exchanged prisoners. In 1245 Alexander and his retinue drove Lithuanian raiders from Torzhok.
King Henry III was 19 in January 1227 when he proclaimed himself of age and gained full use of the seal, enabling him to give charters and grants in perpetuity. When his brother Richard ejected Waloran the German from his manor, the king ordered it restored. Richard refused, and the justiciar advised his arrest; but Richard fled and was backed by the earls of Pembroke, Chester, Gloucester, Surrey, Hereford, Derby, and Warwick. King Henry submitted and was reconciled with his brother. Henry received a request from Peter of Dreux to help him defend Brittany against Louis IX, and in 1230 Henry invaded but accomplished little in five months. Peter of Dreux eventually was reconciled to Louis in 1234 and was allowed to rule Brittany as his vassal until his son John came of age.
In 1228 Richard de Burgh was made justiciar in Ireland. His brother Hubert, England's justiciar, extended his lands in Wales; but his 1228 expedition against Llywelyn at Kerry failed. When the earl of Pembroke, the younger William Marshal, died in 1231, Hubert gained the Braose lands. That year Llywelyn attacked and gained much territory in the truce. A movement against the benefices given to Italians by papal influence was led by Yorkshire land-owner Robert Tweng; those farming lands of churches held by absentees withheld their rents and molested some Italians, and justiciar Hubert was also blamed for this.
Meanwhile Peter des Roches had returned from the crusade in which he had helped Friedrich negotiate a treaty regaining holy sites as well as promoting the Emperor's reconciliation with Pope Gregory IX in the treaty of San Germano in 1230. In France Peter des Roches mediated a truce to end the fighting between France and the Anglo-Breton alliance. Bishop Peter des Roches entertained King Henry and the justiciar on Christmas in 1231 at Winchester and began to challenge the growing power of Justiciar Hubert de Burgh. In June 1232 Peter's nephew Peter des Rivaux was named treasurer and was given authority over the small seal, the Jews, ports, escheats, wardships, and the mint; also several offices gave him control of the royal finances in Ireland. Hubert's power was also increased, but two months later he was charged with attacking Italians and was forced to surrender his castles to the new justiciar Stephen Segrave. Hubert was imprisoned and eventually lost all his offices, Welsh honors, escheats, and wardships, but pressure from the Church and barons enabled him to retain his lands and dignities as an earl. In Ireland Felim O'Connor was released; allied with Moylurg king MacDermot, he defeated and killed Aedh O'Connor and assumed the kingship.
The financial reforms of the Poitevin Peters soon aroused resentment. Peter des Rivaux became justiciar in South Wales and controlled the administration of Ireland. In a dispute over a manor in Wiltshire the Marshal Richard upheld the cause of ejected Gilbert Basset, and sporadic violence broke out in various places. Guards were strengthened as King Henry prepared to invade Ireland in order to conquer Connaught. Richard de Burgh aided the king by checking Earl Richard Marshal. Henry used Flemish mercenaries and besieged Marshal's castle at Usk. Earl Richard only wanted abuses corrected and submitted when the king agreed. Peter des Rivaux was blamed for his "blood-stained letter" that declared Richard Marshal a traitor and led to his murder in Kildare when he demanded his lands be restored. Resentment against the Poitevins gained leadership after monks elected the Oxford teacher Edmund of Abingdon as Archbishop of Canterbury. The king had Peter des Rivaux and his associates investigated. Peter des Roches was serving the Pope in Italy, and Henry wrote to the Emperor that he had been led astray by Bishop Peter. In 1234 Henry admitted Hubert de Burgh and Gilbert Basset back into his council, and Archbishop Edmund negotiated a truce with Llywelyn. The king had outlawed Hubert illegally, and Gilbert had been ejected arbitrarily. Yet rule by law rather than royal edict had been vindicated.
The financial reforms began by Peter des Rivaux had a lasting effect. When he became treasurer in 1232, Peter was sheriff in 21 shires. He instituted a survey to handle local defaulters, enabling the Exchequer to control the profits of the shires. Administration of escheats, wardships, and successions was taken from the sheriffs and given to royal officers. Sheriffs were given salaries and were not allowed to exploit their office in tax farming or by taking charges, fines, and payments in the king's name. A judicial eyre in 1234 was led by Devonshire judge William Ralegh. In 1236 the Merton statute provided further legal protections for widows, heirs, and successful litigants.
In Ireland a chancery was established at Dublin in 1232. Anglo-Normans led by Justiciar Maurice fitz Gerald (1232-1245) invaded Connaught in 1235 and defeated O'Brien of Thomond and Felim O'Connor. O'Brien made peace, but O'Connor escaped to O'Donnell. In Ulster the kingship was disputed for several years until the justiciar and Hugh de Lacy expelled O'Loughlin and enthroned O'Neill in 1238. The Irish factions continued to fight among themselves and against the Anglo-Norman settlers.
In 1235 Henry's sister Isabella married Emperor Friedrich, who sent Peter de Vinea to England. Scholar Robert Grosseteste was made bishop of Lincoln. The next year Henry III married Eleanor of Provence, sister of Louis IX's wife Margaret, and this helped the two brothers-in-law maintain peaceful relations during most of their long reigns. In 1237 Henry sent out William Ralegh to collect a general tax to pay for these weddings; but the barons blamed the new bishop of Winchester, William of Savoy. The king agreed to add three barons to his council, which was given control of the proceeds of the new tax. The Great Charters of liberties and the forest were confirmed yet again as was the Archbishop's sentence of excommunication against anyone who violated them. Henry gained Chester for the crown when its last earl died. In 1238 the Frenchman Simon de Montfort, who had become earl of Leicester, married Henry's sister Eleanor. This caused a scandal, because she had taken an oath of chastity when her husband William Marshal died, though she was only 16 at the time. The king retreated to the tower of London and once again yielded to the barons.
After Welsh prince Llywelyn ap Iorwerth died in 1240, his son David (Dafydd) by King John's daughter Joan was preferred to his older illegitimate brother Gruffudd; but the conflict between them was used by the English to limit David's power to Gwynedd as Henry's armies attacked the north Welsh coast in 1241 and 1245. Gruffudd was kept a prisoner in the tower of London, but in 1244 he was killed trying to escape when an improvised rope broke. That year David tried to expand his realm by war, but he died two years later. Then Gruffudd's sons Oswain and Llywelyn divided Gwynedd, agreeing to an armistice in 1247. When Scot king Alexander II died in 1249, his eight-year-old son was crowned as Alexander III and did homage at York for his lands in England. He was knighted and married Henry III's daughter Margaret, and Henry added two members to the regency council of Scotland.
In 1242 Henry allied with his mother Isabel and Hugues de Lusignan and invaded Poitou; but faced with the army of Louis IX at Taillebourg, Henry fled to Saintes and accepted a truce the next year. In 1244 magnates, who disliked money being wasted on such wars, insisted that they assent to the selection of the new chancellor. King Henry admired Edward the Confessor, and in 1245 he began building him a shrine, which he decorated with many tapestries and other art. In fifteen years Henry demanded 73,000 pounds in taxes from the Jews, nearly half their assets. In 1248 Henry appointed Simon de Montfort seneschal of Gascony; the Gascons revolted in 1250, but the rebellion was suppressed by Simon the following year.
Bishop Grosseteste had opposed for years ecclesiastics being involved in secular offices, and he tried to stop secular interference in ecclesiastic courts. Grosseteste learned that Rome was taking an annual sum of 70,000 marks out of England; this was three times the king's income. In 1250 Grosseteste went to Pope Innocent IV at Lyons to complain about papal privileges, secular powers limiting episcopal authority, legal maneuvers to avoid episcopal action, and men in pastoral positions who were unable or unwilling to carry out their duties. He orated about the decline of the Church that is impinged upon by Muslims, Greeks, and heretics. He blamed the papal curia for failing to purge the world of abominations and handing over thousands of souls. The Pope should set a shining example but has been perverted by earthly relatives. Those educated to save souls should not be subordinated to secular administrators. Before his death in 1253 Grosseteste protested to Pope Innocent IV that Italians, knowing no English and never setting foot in England, were making it difficult for the Church to minister to the English people.
In 1254 Henry gave Gascony to his son Edward and took up the cross for a future crusade. Relations with Castile eased that year when Edward was knighted by Alfonso X and wed his sister Eleanor as Alfonso renounced his claims to Gascony. Prince Edward was also endowed with Chester and the conquered lands in Wales. In 1255 a civil war broke out in Wales, and Llywelyn ap Gruffudd defeated and imprisoned his brothers Owain and David. Llywelyn II then led a Welsh revolt against the English for several years that expanded his domain. A campaign against Gwynedd led by Henry III in 1257 failed, and the next year an assembly of magnates swore allegiance to Llywelyn as prince of Wales. In the next four years he consolidated his power with a series of truces, and Llywelyn's title was recognized by Henry III in the 1267 treaty of Montgomery. In Scotland Henry had replaced the council dominated by the Comyns in 1255; but the Comyns seized King Alexander and power in 1257, and in March of the next year they formed an alliance with Llywelyn. A compromise in Scotland was worked out in November 1258 by St. Andrews bishop Gamelin and English mediators, and Alexander III came of age in 1261.
English domination advanced in Ireland during the reign of Henry III. In 1258 Brian O'Neill tried to revive the high-kingship, and Felim's son Aedh gave him hostages in a confederation; but O'Donnell believed that every man should have his own world. The next year Aedh O'Connor brought in 160 foreign warriors called gallowglasses; but the confederates were defeated at Down in 1260, and Brian O'Neill was killed. Ireland held its first parliament in the summer of 1264. By then Edward had enfeoffed Walter de Burgh, who established peace in his earldom of Ulster though Aedh O'Connor succeeded his father Felim in 1265 and continued to fight Walter until the latter died in 1271.
Henry de Bracton served as a judge of King Henry's court for about twenty years and by 1259 wrote his treatise On the Laws and Customs of the Kingdom of England that became the most important textbook for common law. He also compiled notebooks of 500 cases in English law out of 2,000 cases he marked. Most of these cases had been tried by William Ralegh and Martin Pateshull. Bracton believed that law is based on reason, and he tried to convert the mass of customs into a coherent system of jurisprudence. His work, though unfinished, became a textbook that was not surpassed until William Blackstone. He taught lawyers how to analyze a case to determine individual right and allowed each person to have their say. His main point is that government must be legal, that all popes, emperors, kings, lords, lawyers, freemen, and even serfs must be governed under law, which serves, obeys, and protects what is right. He noted that even Jesus Christ and his holy mother did not put themselves above the law.
King Henry III was distracted from the Castilian crusade against the Moors and a Palestine crusade when he accepted the crown of Sicily for his son Edmund. Henry began negotiating peace with France and asked for taxes for the huge papal debt of 135,541 marks he had to pay or have an interdict laid on England; but Sicily was taken over by Manfred, who was crowned at Palermo in 1258. Henry's brother Richard of Cornwall was elected king of the Romans in 1257 and oversaw the negotiations with Louis IX that were conducted by Earl Simon de Montfort, Peter of Savoy, Hugh Bigod, and Henry's half brothers Geoffrey and Guy of Lusignan. In the treaty of Paris in 1259 Henry gave up his claim to Normandy, Maine, Anjou, and Poitou but retained Gascony.
Many magnates of England had opposed Henry's Sicilian adventure, and led by Hugh Bigod at Oxford in 1258 they demanded reform by adding twelve magnates to the king's council of twelve. Henry, Edward, and the Poitevin half-brothers swore to the agreement. Pope Alexander released Edmund from his obligation in Sicily, but he did not send a legate to England despite requests. The Oxford group of four of the 24 elected a council of fifteen, made Hugh Bigod justiciar, and planned regular meetings of the great council or parliament. The chancellor and treasurer were also subject to the council. Henry prepared a campaign against Llywelyn in Wales but was persuaded by the council to make a truce, causing William of Valence and his brothers to resent the Oxford Provisions. Earl Richard of Clare, Earl Simon de Montfort, the Bigods, and Peter of Savoy had taken an oath to support each other. Now the barons who came in arms to the parliament similarly swore to uphold the common enterprise of the Provisions. Knights were elected in shires to bring complaints to the council in parliament.
The October parliament of 1258 proclaimed in Latin, French, and English that it was the king's will that things be done for the good of the realm by the council elected by the king and the community, and all freemen were required to take the oath sworn by the barons. The amendment of wrongs was to begin with the investigations made by the knights. Laws were discussed, revised, and became the Provisions of Westminster a year later. This common law was revised again in 1263 and became the famous statute of Marlborough in 1267. A financial committee of the justiciar, the treasurer, a royal clerk, and two judges selected the sheriffs annually from the knights elected by the shires. While Henry went to France for the treaty in 1259, justiciar Hugh Bigod presided over the council of regency. Edward promised to help those who feared that the barons would not fulfill their commitments to their subtenants, but he also swore to aid Simon de Montfort and the barons' enterprise within his fealty to the king.
In 1260 Llywelyn besieged the castle of Builth and raided south Wales. Henry III ordered parliament not to meet until he returned, and he began to suspect Edward and Earl Simon. Henry summoned to London eight earls and 99 barons for armed service; but after knighting Simon's sons, Edward went on a jousting tour before settling in Gascony. Simon asked that Archbishop Boniface should investigate charges against him before any trial in the king's council, and Henry agreed. The case was dropped, and Simon and Richard of Clare joined the king for a campaign against Llywelyn of Wales; but the truce was renewed. In 1261 King Henry began to oppose the Provisions, and Pope Alexander absolved him from his oath to uphold them. Henry imported mercenaries again, lived in the Tower of London, deprived Justiciar Hugh le Despenser and Chancellor Nicholas of Ely of their offices, and replaced the baronial sheriffs, giving his appointees custody of the royal castles. He made Philip Basset justiciar and gave him the right to use the royal castles to imprison disturbers of the peace. Pope Alexander threatened with excommunication those opposing King Henry under the pretext of reform.
At Kingston Richard of Cornwall and the bishops mediated a compromise in which the king would select the sheriffs from the four knights each shire elected, though the final arbitration was decided by Richard of Cornwall. Angry Simon de Montfort did not participate and left England. The new Pope Urban IV issued a bull favoring Henry in 1262, and Henry announced that the charters of liberties would be enforced but that the ordinances and statutes had been annulled by the Pope; anyone opposing his royal right could be arrested. King Henry went to France to visit Louis as his vassal for Gascony, became ill, and was even believed dead. Llywelyn attacked Roger Mortimer again and Edward's castles, and the lords of the marches would not defend them. While ill Henry ordered the justiciar, chancellor and treasurer to allow no parliaments and named Edmund to represent the crown. Edward landed at Dover with armed knights in February 1263, and in April Simon de Montfort arrived to support the party of Roger Clifford and the Welsh marchers. King Henry ordered a feudal host to gather at Worcester in August. Roger Clifford plundered the manors of Hereford bishop Savoyard Peter of Aigueblanche, imprisoned him, and then seized Gloucester.
In London even Queen Eleanor was attacked by a mob and had to take refuge in St. Paul's, and citizen leaders told Henry to restore the Provisions. Edmund surrendered the castle in Dover, and Henry accepted their terms in July 1263. Earl Simon took over the Tower of London, and again Hugh le Dispenser became justiciar and Nicholas of Ely chancellor. Every shire was given a warden of peace to take over the administration of the royal sheriffs, who retained their financial duties. Henry surrendered Windsor and disbanded his foreign mercenaries, as barons who had opposed the Provisions swore to maintain them in order to keep their lands. Simon also ratified a peace with Llywelyn. Much injustice had been done, and Simon procured royal letters of pardon for the violent acts of his adherents. Meanwhile Edward was fighting for his castles in Wales and had been humiliated by the withdrawal from Windsor. The October parliament of 1263 did not go well; Richard of Cornwall was elected by the wrangling parties to mediate, and the king regained control of the chancery and exchequer. Simon de Montfort was thrown from his horse and broke his leg.
In January 1264 Louis IX's judgment in the Mise of Amiens favored his brother-in-law Henry III in freeing everyone from the obligation to maintain the Provisions. Simon naturally rejected this and made an alliance with Llywelyn. In the anarchy the strong oppressed the weak, and Jews were devastated by Montfortians. Edward and Henry landed and began fighting rebels in the west. In April 1264 they attacked Northampton while the earls Simon and Gilbert took Rochester. At Lewes the king, Edward, and Richard of Cornwall were defeated by Simon's barons, and clerks buried 600 dead. Henry and Edward became hostages, and prisoners were exchanged. The royal castles and those of fled barons were given to Simon's partisans. Jews returned to their homes. The government was administered by Earl Simon of Leicester, Gloucester earl Gilbert of Clare, and the bishop of Chichester, and they chose a council of nine to advise the king. Queen Eleanor and exiles were raising forces in France. The papal legate issued sentences of excommunication and was elected Pope Clement IV. An attempt to rescue Edward failed; when he was returned to King Henry, both swore to obey the provisional government.
However, young Gilbert of Clare defected from Earl Simon and with the marchers joined Edward in taking control of the Severn. Llewelyn sent some troops to help Simon. While holding the king, Simon de Montfort, Hugh le Despenser, and others were defeated and killed at Evesham in 1265 as Henry was rescued by Roger Leyburn. Edward secured Chester; Bristol and Hereford made terms while royal castles surrendered. London was fined 20,000 marks. King Henry made his son Edmund earl of Leicester and seneschal of England. Papal legate Ottobuono Fieschi arrived to govern the Church, make peace with the rebels, and preach a crusade. The bishops of London, Lincoln, Chichester, and Winchester were suspended and ordered to Rome, and the bishop of Worcester died in 1266. That year a parliament approved the Dictum of Kenilworth that enabled rebels to regain their property by paying fines according to their degree of guilt up to five years income maximum, which was about half an estate's value. Ottobuono also mediated a peace treaty in which Henry recognized the conquests of Welsh prince Llywelyn and agreed not to harbor his enemies. In 1267 the Statute of Marlborough promulgated by an assembly of men from various classes established that legal measures could be taken against anyone taking the law into their own hands during the period of legal settlements. Some scholars have considered this a turning point in the ending of feudal law.
For five years the treasury had only an eighth its normal revenue, and so Pope Clement IV approved a tax of a tenth on the clergy to help pay the debts Queen Eleanor had incurred for the royal cause in France. The clergy also contributed an additional twentieth for one year in 1267 to help the disinherited. In 1270 a general tax of a twentieth on personal property for the crusade was approved by a large parliament summoned by King Henry. Prince Edward led the English crusaders but did little to stop the Egyptian Mamluks' conquest of Syria. In 1271 Henry III decreed that all wool workers of both sexes from Flanders and elsewhere would be welcomed and not have to pay taxes for five years. After twenty years of work Henry had dedicated Westminster Abbey to his patron saint Edward the Confessor in 1269, and his body was entombed there when he died in November 1272. Even though Edward was abroad, the succession was peaceful. Parliament met and ratified the royal council's appointment of Walter de Merton as chancellor.
Friedrich II was succeeded by his son Conrad IV, who left Germany under his father-in-law Otto II of Bavaria and carried on the campaign in Italy; but he died in 1254. William of Holland married Elizabeth of Brunswick in 1252; after Conrad died, he extended his power from the Rhineland as he was accepted by princes of the Rhenish League and northern Germany. William fought over Zeeland with Countess Margaret of Flanders but was killed while invading Friesland in 1256. Cornwall earl Richard, brother of England's Henry III, bribed the archbishops of Cologne and Mainz with 8,000 silver marks each and promised the Wittelsbach count palatine of the Rhine an English princess with a dowry of 12,000 marks. With the approval of Bohemian king Ottokar II, Richard was elected Emperor in January 1257; but three months later King Alfonso X of Castile sent 20,000 silver marks and was also elected by Archbishop Arnold of Trier, the Duke of Saxony, the Margrave of Brandenburg, and the devious King Ottokar though Alfonso never came to Germany to be crowned.
Disputes between the citizens and the bishops occurred in many cities. In 1252 citizens of Leipzig destroyed the Zwingburg of the despotic abbot of St. Augustin. In the largest city of Cologne, which had about 50,000 people, a long struggle went on when Archbishop Conrad von Hochstetten, who sided with the Pope and was supported by Count Engelbert, tried to deprive cities of their privileges. After attacking Aachen and being imprisoned, the freed Archbishop next encroached on Cologne; his new currency was so unpopular that he had to flee to Bonn and raise fortifications. Archbishop Conrad's siege of Cologne failed, and in 1258 he incited the large weaver guild to expel the burgher families. When Conrad died in 1261, he was succeeded by Engelbert, who garrisoned the city with mercenaries. A citizen named Eberhard von Buttermarkt persuaded the people to recall the burghers; they stormed the watchtowers of the new Archbishop and freed the city in 1262, as Engelbert fled to Rome and had Cologne put under interdict. Failing to get the weavers against the burghers, Engelbert promoted dissension between prominent burgess families; but he was eventually imprisoned in an iron cage, while an Aachen despot and his three sons were killed by butchers with axes.
In 1247 a citizen of Mainz called Arnold of the Tower had organized a movement against the heavy tolls on the Rhine and other exactions and robberies by the nobles which led to forming the Rhenish League. The archbishops, bishops, and nobles from Mainz, Cologne, Worms, Speyer, Strasbourg, Basle, and Metz gained more independence and formed a public peace treaty that spread in 1255 to the Rhineland, Westphalia, and to southern and northern Germany. When Jews of Halle were persecuted by Archbishop Ruprecht von Magdeburg in 1261, citizens protected them. Citizens of Wurzburg forced Bishop Tring to lift the interdict in 1265 and defeated his successor Berthold in a battle at Kitzingen in 1269. The citizens of Augsburg defeated Bishop Hartmann. By 1271 the League had sixty Rhenish and Swabian towns and had overcome several robber knights.
Bohemian king Ottokar expanded his power by acquiring the duchies of Austria and Styria, which were recognized by Richard in 1262. He also gained territory east of the Rhine in 1266 and the duchy of Carinthia in 1269. Papal legate Gudeo presided over an assembly of prelates at Vienna in 1267 that confirmed the canonical laws of Innocent III against the Jews. Christians were not allowed to associate with Jews, who were required to wear distinctive marks on their clothes and even a pointed hat. After Richard of Cornwall died in 1272, the princes to maintain their independence unanimously chose the less powerful Count Rudolf of Hapsburg as king, and papal diplomacy persuaded Alfonso to give up his claim. Ottokar denounced the election but was defeated and killed by the forces of Rudolf and the Bavarian Wittelsbach family in 1278. The duchies of Austria and Styria were given to Rudolf's Hapsburg sons Albrecht and Rudolf, though the princes blocked their election in 1287 and 1290. Albrecht was not trusted because of his extreme cruelty. When citizens of Vienna revolted against his tyranny in 1287, his siege starved them into capitulating to the loss of all their privileges; he also ordered some blinded and others mutilated.
After King Rudolf died in 1291, Mainz archbishop Gerhard got his cousin Count Adolf of Nassau elected king. Seventeen days after Rudolf's death Swiss cantons in the Schwyz, Uri, and Nidwaldon valleys formed a federal pact to live by law instead of violence with mutual self-defense though Albrecht of Austria defeated their coalition the next year. Zürich survived a siege, and the liberty of the Schwyz (recognized by Friedrich II in 1240) was confirmed by the Landrecht of 1294, which was renewed for the Uri and the Schwyz three years later by Adolf. King Adolf tried to expand his power by getting money from both England and France, enabling him to purchase Thuringia in 1295. Bern defeated the Austrians at Dornbühl in 1298. That year Gerhard and the electors declared Adolf unfit to rule and elected Albrecht of Austria, whose army defeated and killed Adolf. Albrecht I (r. 1298-1308) was crowned at Nuremberg and levied large fines on the cities of Franconia that had murdered Jews after an alleged desecration of the Christian wafer by one Jew. Albrecht kept Zürich out of the Swiss confederation. Albrecht made a treaty with Philip IV of France the next year, angering Archbishop Gerhard. Albrecht also abolished the tolls on the Rhine that had provided such wealth for the Archbishop and the ecclesiastical princes. When John, the last count of Holland, and his wife were poisoned in 1299, Albrecht tried to seize Holland and Zeeland the next year.
In the 12th and 13th centuries the German empire had grown through colonization in the northeast and by increase in population. Orders of knighthood had been formed as the age of chivalry reached its peak in the colonial crusades as well as those to free the holy land. Sons of aristocrats served as pages in the castle of their father's liege lord. Military training began at age 14 and lasted seven years with sports and games such as running, jumping, swimming, wrestling, fencing, archery, riding, and hunting. Tournaments were ceremonial sports to impress ladies; but the brutal combats often ended in death. The virtues of the knight were discipline, self-control, moderation, courage, perseverance, and loyalty. They were expected to fight for the church and the oppressed poor while defending widows, orphans, and pilgrims. Traveling merchants might be defended by virtuous knights or robbed by vicious ones. Castles were built to make the knights invulnerable, and their increasing body armor had the same objective.
The order of Teutonic Knights was founded at Acre in 1190 and was given special privileges by Friedrich II in 1226. Friedrich regularly supported the Teutonic Order. Their crusade into Prussia began in 1230, and in 1245 Pope Innocent IV granted full indulgences for all those who went to Prussia. In 1260 the Prussian Brothers faced a revolt that slaughtered many of their colonies. Pope Urban IV had been trying to organize a crusade against the Mongols but now asked men to take the cross to save the Order in the north. Their forts were relieved by the Duke of Brunswick and Landgrave of Thuringia in 1265, by the Margraves of Brandenburg the next year, and by the Margrave of Meissen in 1272. The central region had been subjugated by 1277, and the Yatwingians were devastated in 1283 when one leader brought 1500 warriors to live under the Order and another took the rest to Lithuania. Revolts attempting to arouse external enemies in 1286 and 1295 both failed. Prussia gave the Teutonic Knights an additional base to add to their many bailiwicks in Germany and Italy.
Improved agriculture and clearing of more land in Germany and the colonies, particularly by the Cistercians, helped the producers' harvests to double while population tripled between 1100 and 1300. Yet millions of acres of forests in western Europe were destroyed to increase land for crops and grazing and in using wood for industrial furnaces. A growing economy gradually improved the plight of most peasants as the villication system was replaced by tenant farmers growing their own crops. Increasing trade and urbanization led to the development of merchant guilds in the 12th century as three annual fairs founded market places that expanded into towns and cities. As industry specialized, the merchant guilds were replaced by the guilds of craftsmen and artisans, who sold their products directly to consumers. The guilds regulated prices, set standards for wages and hours of work, controlled the quality of products, and promoted their business as well as providing other social benefits for their members and families. Apprenticeship in the home of a master might last from two to ten years until the rank of journeyman was achieved. Journeymen traveled to learn and gain experience. Journeymen could apply for guild membership by presenting a masterpiece and passing an examination. Then they could settle down, raise a family, and take an apprentice into their homes.
The medieval economy increasingly used coined money. Christian morality disapproved of usury, the collecting of interest on loans, and so Jews and rationalizing Lombards acquired much wealth in the profitable business of money-lending. Resentment by Christians at the riches and land acquired by Jews in this way often resulted in persecution.
After Emperor Friedrich II died in 1250, the people of Florence established the First Democracy under twelve ancients (anziani) with the commune placed above both the Guelf and Ghibelline factions. Florence turned to Pisa's traditional rival Genoa as an ally. Florence went to war against Ghibelline towns and attacked Pistoia first, and even Siena surrendered in 1254. Florentines argued they were fighting for democracy, but they were extending their hegemony. The famous gold florin was issued in 1252 with the red lily and John the Baptist representing Florence.
In Rome the commercial class made the Ghibelline noble Brancaleone podesta in 1252, and he kept order by making the clergy amenable to civil law and by hanging recalcitrant nobles. The people called him their captain, and he promoted the organization of the thirteen guilds. When the clergy and nobility imprisoned him after his term of office, the guilds got him restored to his position. Pope Innocent excommunicated Brancaleone; after interdicting Bologne for not restoring Roman hostages kept for Brancaleone's safety, Innocent even tried to have him assassinated. After Brancaleone died in 1258, hostility between the Hohenstaufens and the Pope kept Rome in turmoil.
After Friedrich II died in 1250, Pope Innocent IV tried to reclaim the papal lands and so continued the struggle against Friedrich's son and heir, Conrad IV, while Conrad's brother Manfred suppressed a rebellion in Apulia. By 1253 Conrad had won back Capua and Naples. Pope Innocent appealed to England's Henry III and excommunicated Conrad, who died of malaria in 1254. Innocent made a treaty with Manfred but then disregarded that and the claims of Conrad's son Conradin when he recognized Peter of Ruffo as vicar of Sicily and Calabria, making them fiefs of the Papal State. Manfred seized the royal treasure at Lucera and organized Saracen and German forces. Peter of Ruffo agreed to recognize Manfred as Conradin's Balio in exchange for acknowledgment of his regency over Sicily and Calabria. Pope Innocent IV died in December 1254; he had used the papal authority for political power to wreck the German empire in Italy; but in doing so he had corrupted the papacy and began its decline. As Manfred took over Calabria from Peter of Ruffo, the Sicilian towns went over to the new Pope Alexander IV; but in 1256 the ruthless Manfred had his Hohenburg enemies blinded and Peter of Ruffo murdered as he conquered the Regno, Terra di Lavoro, and Sicily.
When Manfred was crowned king of Sicily at Palermo in 1258, the Ghibellines rose up in Florence but were defeated and withdrew; now it was the Guelfs' turn to destroy the Ghibelline homes. In 1252 the tyrants Ezzelino da Romano of Verona and Uberto Pallavicino of Cremona had formed a Ghibelline league of Italian cities. In 1258 Ezzelino took Brescia; but Pallavicino fought for Manfred and defeated the cruel Ezzelino at Cassano. Siena appealed to Manfred, who sent troops in 1259. Montemassi was besieged the next year, and at Montaperto the Florentines lost 10,000 men and retreated. In Tuscany Guelfs abandoned towns to the Ghibellines, and Manfred's vicar-general, Count Guido Novello, became podesta of Florence. The Ghibellines took revenge against the Guelfs, ruining more buildings in Florence as the Guelfs fled to Lucca, which was forced to banish the Guelf refugees in 1264. The French Pope Urban IV (1261-1264) countered by putting Siena and Florence under interdict, for their merchants were the papal bankers and helped collect church revenues.
Urban and another French Pope, Clement IV (1265-1268), persuaded French bishops to tithe for three years to a crusade against Manfred led by Charles of Anjou, brother of French king Louis IX. Charles was declared the Senator of Rome in 1264, and the next year he was invested as king and crusading chief in Rome. Homeless Florentine Guelfs helped the French army of Charles defeat and kill Manfred near Beneventum in 1266. Count Guido and the German imperialist forces agreed to leave Florence so that the interdict could be lifted, and the next year the remaining Ghibellines had to give way to the French army of Charles and the Guelfs. Charles became podesta and held the position for the next thirteen years. In Lombardy revolutions overthrew the Ghibelline domination except in despotic Verona and republican Pavia as Pallavicino retired and died in 1269. In Milan the Della Torre family banished Archbishop Ottone Visconti from 1262 to 1277. Charles defeated the larger imperial forces led by Conrad's 16-year-old son Conradin in 1268. This last Hohenstaufen emperor was then convicted of treason and publicly beheaded in Naples.
Pope Clement had appointed Charles of Anjou Pacifier (Paciarus) of Tuscany in 1267 for three years; but promises were broken when no parliament was held, and general taxes were collected. Charles had to give up the senatorship of Rome but regained it for ten years in 1269. Charles and the Florentines defeated Siena and their Ghibelline allies, and the next year Pisa and Siena accepted Guelf domination. The most zealous Ghibelline rebels fled Florence under threat of death, and the confinati who stayed were reduced to poverty. Lucera had surrendered in 1269, and the next year revolt in Sicily was suppressed when Conrad Capece was captured and executed. The ambitious Charles tried to secure alliances in the east with marriages of his relatives to the kingdoms of Achaia and Hungary. After a three-year struggle an Italian was finally elected Pope Gregory X (1271-1276). He tried to mediate the Guelf-Ghibelline conflict at a Lyons assembly in 1273; but when the Guelf leaders in Florence did not cooperate, Gregory placed the city under an interdict.
A 1270 revolution in Genoa gave popular support to Ghibelline nobles, and their navy defeated the Guelf forces of Charles in 1273. Genoa then opened Ghibelline western Lombardy to 1,000 Spanish troops to help William VII of Montferrat. Charles lost Piedmont to the Ghibellines in 1275 as his Della Torre allies faded away. Pope Gregory confronted King Alfonso X of Castile in Provence and persuaded him to renounce his Roman kingship. Then the Pope met Hapsburg emperor Rudolf and got him to occupy Milan with German forces; but Gregory could not convince Rudolf to renounce Romagna before he died in January 1276. Three Popes were elected and died in the next seventeen months. in 1277 the Siena council excluded the grandi of the nobility from being their supreme magistrate.
Pope Nicholas III (1277-1280) attempted to reclaim control of northern Italy from Rudolph, and fighting went on between the Ghibellines led by Archbishop Ottone Visconti of Milan and the Guelf league led by Cremona, mostly over Lodi, which was still held by the Della Torre. Ottone in 1278 called in William VII of Monteferrat as Captain-General of Milan for four years. Pope Nicholas persuaded Charles in 1278 to let his Roman senatorship expire and to resign his vicariate of Tuscany. Nicholas appointed his nephews as legates of Tuscany and Romagna and sent the Dominican cardinal Latino to make peace at Florence in 1279. A new constitution replaced the power of Charles; but the next year Pope Nicholas died, and Rudolph sent a vicar to Tuscany. In 1281 Charles managed to get another Frenchman elected as Pope Martin IV, who appointed his patron Charles senator of Rome once again and employed his French administrators. That year Milan archbishop Ottone finally captured Lodi. Efforts Nicholas had made to reconcile the Byzantine and Roman churches were canceled when Martin excommunicated the Greeks.
King Pedro III of Aragon was married to Manfred's daughter Constance and aimed to conquer her inheritance by forming an alliance with the Byzantine Michael Paleologus, enemy of Charles, and so Pedro proclaimed a crusade against Africa to raise arms. During vespers of Easter week 1282 a French soldier accosted a Sicilian woman and was murdered by her husband. Fighting escalated into a revolt, and by morning 2,000 French had been massacred. The Sicilian rebels chose Pedro of Aragon as their king, and his navy drove out the forces of Charles. Pope Martin reacted by deposing Pedro and proclaiming a crusade and an interdict against him. In 1284 Genoa destroyed the Pisan fleet and captured 9,000 prisoners. Genoa had such a large assembly that when debating the French-Sicilian war 105 councilors made speeches.
Charles had appointed his son Charles the Lame, prince of Salerno, as regent of the Regno; but he was captured trying to conquer Naples in 1284, and his father Charles of Anjou died of fever the following January. When Pedro of Aragon also died in 1285, his son Jaime became king of Sicily. The Roman Pope Honorius IV kept order in the papal city while enriching his Savelli relatives as the Orsini revolted from Charles II and appointed Roman senators; but Honorius died in 1287. Pope Nicholas IV countered the Savelli by favoring the house of Colonna. Charles the Lame was eventually released, and Nicholas crowned him king of Sicily in 1289 as fighting went on in the Regno. That year Charles II expelled the Jews from Anjou and Maine, and in the early 1290s he encouraged inquisitors to force many Jews in Apulia to convert. Sicily with a parliament thrived under Jaime and the influence of Aragon.
In Florence growing capitalism helped develop the merchant guilds (arti), and in 1282 they seized power by choosing six priors as rulers from their seven major guilds, which were the judges and notaries, cloth dealers and refiners, money-changers, wool manufacturers, retailers of Por Santa Maria and silk merchants, physicians and apothecaries, and furriers. The five minor guilds were butchers, shoemakers, blacksmiths, carpenters, and second-hand dealers. The podesta was still chief judge and leader of the army, but he was now under the six priors, who were elected every two months. The remaining serfs were liberated by a law in 1289. That year Florence crushed Arezzo for having elected Ghibellines. However, Pisa was not so easy to suppress, and many complained of the on-going war. Nine more minor guilds were given a military organization. In 1293 Florence passed the Ordinances of Justice to control the magnates (grandi), who were banned from influential positions.
Edward I (r. 1272-1307) was in Italy returning from the crusade when Henry III died. After stopping in Rome to see Pope Gregory X, Edward went to Paris to do homage to Philip III for Gascony, which he then visited. He was not crowned at Westminster until August 1274, though he had been managing the government from the continent. Robert Burnell was one of the trustees while Edward was on crusade, and he helped facilitate the smooth succession. When Edward returned to England, he appointed Burnell chancellor. Burnell was also bishop of Bath and Wells 1275-1292 and became a great land-owner. After Henry of Navarre died in 1274, his widow Blanche of Artois turned to Philip III for protection, entrusting Navarre to him until her daughter Jeanne came of age. Then at the end of the following year she married Edward's brother Edmund, who was earl of Lancaster, seneschal of England as earl of Leicester, and the greatest land-owner in England. Edmund then did homage to Philip for her Champagne. The sister queens Margaret (d. 1295) and Eleanor (d. 1291) outlived their husbands Louis IX and Henry III, helping to maintain peaceful relations between France and England.
An inquest in 1274 led to an investigation of local administrators who had usurped liberties and abused their rights. Edward issued a statute in 1275 that elections should be free from interference by the great; but that year he also prohibited Jews from lending money at interest. In 1278 thousands of Jews were arrested and charged with counterfeiting or clipping coins; 278 Jews were hanged, but others convicted of similar offenses were only fined. In 1287 Edward had Jews and their wives arrested, releasing them after receiving a large ransom. In 1290 his mother persuaded Edward to order all Jews to leave England or be hanged, and a reported 16,511 Jews were expelled. Edward summoned parliaments in the spring and autumn nearly every year. A tax of a fifteenth was collected in 1275 to pay for his recent travels, and that year knights were invited to parliament. Edward was granted a customs tax on wool that added about 8,000 pounds a year to his royal income. In 1278 Edward wanted to replace the Dominican Robert Kilwardby as Archbishop of Canterbury with his friend Robert Burnell; but he was overruled by the papacy that selected the Franciscan John Pecham (1278-1292), who fought the crown to maintain the Church's rights and privileges.
The Westminster statutes of 1275 and 1285 improved common law. Quo warranto statutes investigated which royal franchises were held legitimately. In 1279 25 commissions were appointed to investigate tenements and liberties in order to check abuses by land-owners, sheriffs, and bailiffs. That year the Statute of Mortmain prohibited land from being given to the Church without royal license. In 1285 Treasurer John Kirkby led an investigation to gather information on local officials for the Exchequer. Another commission looked into official corruption in 1289, and the judge Thomas of Wayland was dismissed and lost his lands. Adam of Stratton extorted so much money from the Cluniac monastery of Bermondsey in Gascony over the years that he was finally imprisoned in 1292. The 1283 and 1285 statutes of Acton Burnell helped merchants collect debts by establishing debtor's prisons, and the statute of Quia Emptores of 1290 ended the subinfeudation of land.
In 1276 Edward tried to end the battling in Ireland by giving all of Thomond to the Earl of Gloucester's brother Thomas de Clare, who restored King Brian while expelling Turlough; but the next year Turlough defeated Brian, killing de Clare's brother-in-law. De Clare had Brian executed; but he repented of it and supported Brian's son Donough for the throne. Brutal fighting continued until Donough was killed in 1284; de Clare died three years later, but the vendetta between the O'Brien factions would go on for another thirty years. In Connaught after Felim's son Aedh died in 1274, four men trying to gain the throne were killed in as many years. Ulster was calm after Earl Walter's son Richard de Burgh came of age and was given seisin (feudal possession) of his lands in 1280. In six years the young earl gained control of Connaught too; but there the old Geraldine quarrel broke out in 1294. Earl Richard became the most powerful man in northern Ireland and assisted Edward in the Scottish campaigns of 1296 and 1303. Edward appointed the less powerful John de Wogan justiciar in 1295, and two years later in order to provide funds for Edward's wars he summoned the first parliament that included two knights elected from each shire. In the 1300 Irish parliament the cities and boroughs were also represented.
In Wales David plotted with Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn of south Powys, but they both fled to England when Prince Llywelyn ap Gruffydd took Gruffydd's lordship. War broke out in 1276, but by the next year Edward's paid army of 15,640, which was mostly Welsh, had regained the lands conquered by Llywelyn, who made a treaty at Conway. Llywelyn's brother Owain was released after having been in prison for 22 years. Edward even paid for Llywelyn's wedding to Eleanor de Montfort at Worcester. Local sheriffs lost power in 1277 and again in 1286 during the king's wars with Wales when keepers of the peace were elected to maintain order, and they were succeeded by justices of the peace. David led another revolt in 1282, and a Welsh parliament at Denbigh even declared war. Canterbury archbishop Pecham excommunicated David. Edward hired a professional army of about 10,000 men for 60,000 pounds. Edward was victorious and gave marcher lordships to Lincoln earl Henry de Lacy, Earl Warenne, and Reginald of Grey. Roger Mortimer and the Queen also gained territory. Prince Llywelyn also revolted in the south but was killed. David was eventually captured, hanged, and quartered. This war in Wales required a tax of a thirtieth granted by the provincial assemblies of York and Northampton in 1283.
Royal castles were built in Wales from 1277 on and eventually cost about 80,000 pounds. Criminal law was made to conform with English laws in the 1284 Statute of Wales, though Welsh civil laws tended to remain. Edward's son Edward was born that year at Caenarvon and was the first royal heir to be named the prince of Wales. The Welsh lord Rhys revolted in 1287; but he was defeated the next year by the justiciar Tybetot, the earl of Gloucester, though Rhys fled to the forest and was not tried and hanged until 1292. While Edward was mobilizing to fight abroad in 1294, the Welsh resisted supporting the war and revolted again; but the king soon had raised three armies of more than 31,000 men to subdue them after one defeat the next year.
Alexander III did homage to Edward in 1278 for his lands in England, but he reserved his kingdom of Scotland. After Alexander was killed in a fall from his horse in 1286, the magnates and prelates met in parliament and named young Margaret, the maid of Norway, the first Queen of Scotland and appointed as guardians Bishop William Fraser of St. Andrews, Earl Duncan III of Fife, and Earl Alexander Comyn of Buchan from the north and Bishop Robert Wishart, James the Stewart, and John Comyn of Badenoch from the south.
Pollution from burning coal was so bad in 1257 that Queen Eleanor was driven away from Nottingham castle. Complaints starting in 1285 indicate that London may have been the first city to suffer from air pollution. King Edward went to Paris to do homage to the newly crowned Philip IV in 1286. Edward sold his rights in Quercy while securing his possession of Saintonge. He stayed on the continent three years attending to his duties as Duke of Aquitane. He also mediated a truce at Paris between the Aragonese envoys and Philip. Edward took up the cross for another crusade in 1287 but never went. In 1288 he obtained the release of Charles II of Anjou and Salerno by pledging 36 of his English and Aquitanian barons and forty citizens of Gascon as hostages. These were also released five months later after Charles fulfilled his obligations to Alfonso of Aragon. Edward approved an ordinance for Gascony, Saintonge, and his lands in Limoges, Perigueux, and Cahors in 1289 that gave the seneschal of Gascony authority over the judges, auditors, proctors, advocates, and others with a salary of 2,000 pounds so that he could not receive any money from the king's officers.
In 1290 Edward proclaimed the end of private warfare. His daughter Joan of Acre married Gilbert of Clare, earl of Gloucester, who as the greatest of the marcher lords of south Wales resented pledging fealty to the king. Gilbert went to war with Hereford earl Humphrey of Bohun, lord of Brecknock, who appealed to Edward. A commission of magnates investigated, and in 1292 the Parliament condemned both earls to be imprisoned though they were freed after paying fines for their lands. The judges and Parliament had ruled that the King had the prerogative to over-rule local customs and laws for the common good.
Also in 1290 Edward's daughter Margaret married the heir of the Brabant duke, and his son Edward was betrothed to Margaret, the maid of Norway and queen of Scotland; but later that year Margaret of Scotland died on her way from Norway to Scotland. This was soon followed by the death of King Edward's own wife Eleanor of Castile. Edward re-appointed four of the guardians selected to govern Scotland and added his knight Brian fitz Alan. In 1292 Edward chose John Balliol as the rightful ruler of Scotland but as his vassal. Edward heard appeals from the Scottish court. When John Balliol did not appear to answer charges of Macduff, the Parliament at Westminster ordered him to give up three castles to Edward. When England went to war in Gascony in 1294, Edward ordered English and Scottish ports closed. A council of twelve Scots took control and made an alliance with Philip of France. Edward then ordered John to surrender three more castles; but Balliol reacted by renouncing his fealty to Edward. In 1296 the Scots raided Cumberland and Northumberland; but Edward himself led his army that massacred many as it sacked Berwick, which he established as his capital for Scotland. John was forced to surrender his kingdom to Edward. When William Wallace led a revolt in his name in 1297, John and seniors of the Comyn family were imprisoned in the Tower of London.
Battles between the English fleet and the Norman ships of France began in 1293. Philip IV summoned Edward to appear at Paris in January 1294 to answer charges, but no safe conduct was offered. Edward was condemned by default in May, and he renounced his fealty to Philip. Edward took control of the wool industry with a severe maltote tax that was a six-fold increase, built a large fleet, and levied knights and infantry (including pardoned criminals) for the war abroad. Judicial eyres and quo warranto investigations were suspended and were never really revived. In 1295 two burgesses as well as two knights were elected to parliament from each city or borough. This pattern was later referred to as the "model parliament." Diplomatically Edward used an alliance with his sons-in-law in Bar and Brabant and tried to keep Roman king Adolf on his side. Holland count John married Edward's daughter Elizabeth.
French armies led by Charles of Valois and Robert of Artois invaded Gascony. In 1296 Pope Boniface VIII forbade rulers to collect and clerics to pay any extra taxes without papal approval, and the next year Canterbury archbishop Winchelsea held a convocation in which the clergy refused to contribute. Edward outlawed the clergy by threatening confiscation of property and imprisonment until they agreed to provide funds. The danger of Wallace's raids convinced the northern province to provide a fifth, and the southern granted a tenth. Edward confirmed the great charters and promised that no tallage or aid would be imposed in the future unless approved by magnates, knights, burgesses, and other freemen. The old Roman maxim that what touches all should be approved by all was often cited, especially by clergy. Then he went to Flanders and made his headquarters in Ghent. Edward's armies in the south regained Bayonne, Bourg, and Blaye but could not take Bourdeaux. In October 1297 a truce was made with France that was extended from time to time. Pope Boniface VIII began arbitration in 1298; but the treaty of Paris was not signed until 1303. Between 1294 and 1298 Edward spent 750,000 pounds on war.
After Wallace's Scottish victory at Stirling Bridge in September 1297, Edward had to make various promises to gain support for that war. In the future all aids, mise writs, and prizes could only be taken with the consent of the whole kingdom for the common benefit except for accustomed aids and prises; the great charters were reissued with supplementary laws; the hated maltote tax on wool was repealed; those who had refused to aid Edward in Flanders were pardoned; parliament granted a new subsidy of a ninth; and the clergy granted a tenth. Enlistment to reconquer Scotland was then begun. After Moray died of his wounds at Stirling, Wallace led the Scottish government alone, invading Northumberland and Cumberland. Edward's cavalry and archers using longbows destroyed Wallace's army at Falkirk, but resistance under aristocratic leaders continued. In 1299 Edward married Margaret of France, and his son Edward was betrothed to Philip's daughter Isabella. John Balliol was released to the papal envoy with the understanding that the status of Scotland would not be affected. Philip persuaded Edward to make a truce with Scotland to extend until Pentecost 1301.
The double tax that attempted to take a ninth of assessed goods in 1297 yielded only 34,419 pounds from a war-weary nation that had contributed 117,000 pounds for a crusade and Edward's travels in the fifteenth tax of 1290. Another double tax in 1294 had taken a tenth from the shires and a sixth from the towns after having been approved by London. The official enrollment of statutes began in 1299. The parliament at Winchester in March 1300 ordered the great charters to be published in county courts four times a year; infringements were heard, judged, and punished by three good men elected in each shire. Edward had to concede that reports of commissioners were verdicts to be enforced, not just material to be examined, in order to get the subsidy of a twentieth raised to a fifteenth. Justices elected in 1300 to enforce the charters had their powers defined by the advice of prelates and magnates. The population of England had grown from about two million in 1086 to five million in 1300, and in the 13th century the money in circulation had increased from about 250,000 pounds to 900,000.
1. Magna Carta 39-40 tr. Harry Rothwell in Warren, W.
L, King John 1167-1216, p. 272.
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