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Henry III of England

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: British History 1500 and
before (including Roman Britain); Monarchs of Great Britain

                      Henry III
        By the Grace of God, King of England,
   Lord of Ireland and Duke of Aquitaine
    Tomb effigy of Henry III in Westminster Abbey
   Reign       18-19 October 1216 - 16 November 1272
   Coronation  28 October 1216, Gloucester
   Born        October 1, 1207
               Winchester Castle
   Died        16 November 1272 (age 65)
               Westminster
   Buried      Westminster Abbey
   Predecessor John
   Successor   Edward I
   Consort     Eleanor of Provence (c. 1223- 1291)
   Issue       Edward I ( 1239- 1307)
               Margaret of England ( 1240- 1275)
               Beatrice of England ( 1242- 1275)
               Edmund Crouchback ( 1245- 1296)
   Royal House Plantagenet
   Father      John ( 1167- 1216)
   Mother      Isabella of Angouleme
               (c. 1187- 1246)

   Henry III ( 1 October 1207 – 16 November 1272) was the son and
   successor of John Lackland as King of England, reigning for fifty six
   years from 1216 to his death. Medieval English monarchs did not use
   numbers after their names, and his contemporaries knew him as Henry of
   Winchester. He was the first child king in England since the Norman
   Conquest. Despite his long reign, his personal accomplishments were
   slim and he was a political and military failure. England, however,
   prospered during his century and his greatest monument is Westminster,
   which he made the seat of his government and where he expanded the
   abbey as a shrine to Edward the Confessor.

   He assumed the crown under the regency of the popular William Marshal,
   but the England he inherited had undergone several drastic changes in
   the reign of his father. He spent much of his reign fighting the barons
   over the Magna Carta and the royal rights, and was eventually forced to
   call the first " parliament" in 1264. He was also unsuccessful on the
   Continent, where he endeavoured to re-establish English control over
   Normandy, Anjou, and Aquitaine.

Succession

   Henry III was born in 1207 at Winchester Castle. He was the son of King
   John and Isabella of Angoulême.

   After his father John’s death in 1216, Henry, who was nine at the time,
   was hastily crowned in Gloucester Cathedral; he was the first child
   monarch since the Norman invasion of England in 1066. Under John's
   rule, the barons were supporting an invasion by Prince Louis of France
   because they disliked the way that John had ruled the country. However,
   they quickly saw that the young prince was a safer option. Henry's
   regents immediately declared their intention to rule by Magna Carta,
   which they proceeded to do during Henry’s minority. Magna Carta was
   reissued in 1217 as a sign of goodwill to the barons and the country
   was ruled by regents until 1227.

Attitudes and beliefs during his reign

   As Henry reached maturity he was keen to restore royal authority,
   looking towards the autocratic model of the French monarchy. Henry
   married Eleanor of Provence and he promoted many of his French
   relatives higher positions of power and wealth. For instance, one
   Poitevin, Peter des Riveaux, held the offices of Treasurer of the
   Household, Keeper of the King's Wardrobe, Lord Privy Seal, and the
   sheriffdoms of twenty-one English counties simultaneously. Henry's
   tendency to govern for long periods with no publicly-appointed
   ministers who could be held accountable for their actions and decisions
   did not make matters any easier. Many English barons came to see his
   method of governing as foreign.

   Henry was much taken with the cult of the Anglo-Saxon saint king Edward
   the Confessor who had been canonised in 1161. Told that St Edward
   dressed austerely, Henry took to doing the same and wearing only the
   simplest of robes. He had a mural of the saint painted in his
   bedchamber for inspiration before and after sleep and even named his
   eldest son Edward. Henry designated Westminster, where St Edward had
   founded the abbey, as the fixed seat of power in England and
   Westminster Hall duly became the greatest ceremonial space of the
   kingdom, where the council of nobles also met. Henry appointed French
   architects from Rheims to the renovation of Westminster Abbey in Gothic
   style. Work began, at great expense, in 1245. The centrepiece of
   Henry's renovated Westminster Abbey was to be a shrine to the confessor
   king, Edward. Henry's shrine to Edward the Confessor was finished in
   1269 and the saint's relics were installed.
            English Royalty
         House of Plantagenet
   Armorial of Plantagenet
               Henry III
      Edward I Longshanks
       Margaret, Queen of Scots
       Beatrice, Duchess of Brittany
       Edmund, Earl of Lancaster

   Henry was extremely pious and his journeys were often delayed by his
   insistence on hearing Mass several times a day. He took so long to
   arrive on a visit to the French court that his brother-in-law, King
   Louis IX of France, banned priests from Henry's route. On one occasion,
   as related by Roger of Wendover, when King Henry met with papal
   prelates, he said, "If (the prelates) knew how much I, in my reverence
   of God, am afraid of them and how unwilling I am to offend them, they
   would trample on me as on an old and worn-out shoe."

Criticisms

   Henry's advancement of foreign favourites, notably his wife's Savoyard
   uncles and his own Lusignan half-siblings, was unpopular with his
   subjects and barons. He was also extravagant and avaricious; when his
   first child, Prince Edward, was born, Henry demanded that Londoners
   bring him rich gifts to celebrate. He even sent back gifts that did not
   please him. Matthew Paris reports that some said, "God gave us this
   child, but the king sells him to us."
   Henry III lands in Aquitaine, from a later (15th century) illumination.
   (Bibliothèque Nationale, MS fr. 2829, folio 18)
   Henry III lands in Aquitaine, from a later (15th century) illumination.
   (Bibliothèque Nationale, MS fr. 2829, folio 18)

Wars and rebellions

   Henry's reign came to be marked by civil strife as the English barons,
   led by de Montfort, demanded more say in the running of the kingdom.
   French-born Simon de Montfort had originally been one of the foreign
   upstarts so loathed by many as Henry's foreign councillors; after he
   married Henry’s sister Eleanor, without consulting Henry, a feud
   developed between the two. Their relationship reached a crisis in the
   1250s when de Montfort was brought up on spurious charges for actions
   he took as lieutenant of Gascony, the last remaining Plantagenet land
   across the English Channel. He was acquitted by the Peers of the realm,
   much to the King's displeasure.

   Henry also became embroiled in funding a war in Sicily on behalf of the
   Pope in return for a title for his second son Edmund, a state of
   affairs that made many barons fearful that Henry was following in the
   footsteps of his father, King John, and needed to be kept in check,
   too. De Montfort became leader of those who wanted to reassert Magna
   Carta and force the king to surrender more power to the baronial
   council. In 1258, seven leading barons forced Henry to agree to the
   Provisions of Oxford, which effectively abolished the absolutist
   Anglo-Norman monarchy, giving power to a council of fifteen barons to
   deal with the business of government and providing for a three-yearly
   meeting of parliament to monitor their performance. Henry was forced to
   take part in the swearing of a collective oath to the Provisions of
   Oxford.

   In the following years, those supporting de Montfort and those
   supporting the king grew more and more polarised. Henry obtained a
   papal bull in 1262 exempting him from his oath and both sides began to
   raise armies. The Royalists were led by Prince Edward, Henry's eldest
   son. Civil war, known as the Second Barons' War, followed.

   The charismatic de Montfort and his forces had captured most of
   southeastern England by 1263, and at the Battle of Lewes on 14 May
   1264, Henry was defeated and taken prisoner by de Montfort's army.
   While Henry was reduced to being a figurehead king, de Montfort
   broadened representation to include each county of England and many
   important towns—that is, to groups beyond the nobility. Henry and
   Edward continued under house arrest. The short period that followed was
   the closest England was to come to complete abolition of the monarchy
   until the Commonwealth period of 1649–1660 and many of the barons who
   had initially supported de Montfort began to suspect that he had gone
   too far with his reforming zeal.
   The tomb of King Henry III in Westminster Abbey, London
   The tomb of King Henry III in Westminster Abbey, London

   But only fifteen months later Prince Edward had escaped captivity
   (having been freed by his cousin Roger Mortimer) to lead the royalists
   into battle again and he turned the tables on de Montfort at the Battle
   of Evesham in 1265. Following this victory savage retribution was
   exacted on the rebels.

Death

   Henry's reign ended when he died in 1272, after which he was succeeded
   by his son, Edward I. His body was laid, temporarily, in the tomb of
   Edward the Confessor while his own sarcophagus was constructed in
   Westminster Abbey.

Appearance

   According to Nicholas Trevet, Henry was a thickset man of medium height
   with a narrow forehead and a drooping left eyelid (inherited by his
   son, Edward I).

Marriage and children

   Married on 14 January 1236, Canterbury Cathedral, Canterbury, Kent, to
   Eleanor of Provence, with at least five children born:
    1. Edward I (1239–1307)
    2. Margaret (1240–1275), married King Alexander III of Scotland
    3. Beatrice of England(1242–1275), married to John II, Duke of
       Brittany
    4. Edmund Crouchback (1245–1296)
    5. Katharine (1253–1257)

   There is reason to doubt the existence of several attributed children
   of Henry and Eleanor. Richard, John, and Henry are known only from a
   14th century addition made to a manuscript of Flores historiarum, and
   are nowhere contemporaneously recorded. William is an error for the
   nephew of Henry's half-brother, William de Valence. Another daughter,
   Matilda, is found only in the Hayles abbey chronicle, alongside such
   other fictitious children as a son named William for King John, and a
   bastard son named John for King Edward I. Matilda's existence is
   doubtful, at best. For further details, see Margaret Howell, The
   Children of King Henry III and Eleanor of Provence (1992).

Trivia

     * In The Divine Comedy Dante sees Henry ("the king of simple life")
       sitting outside the gates of Purgatory with other contemporary
       European rulers.
     * His Royal Motto was qui non dat quod habet non accipit ille quod
       optat, He who does not give what he has, does not receive what he
       wants...
     * His favorite wine was made with the Loire Valley red wine grape
       Pineau d'Aunis which Henry first introduced to England in the
       thirteenth century.
     * His favourite oath was "By the face of Lucca", referring to the
       Volto Santo di Lucca.

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