[Sidenote:  Henry the Third]

Never had there been more need of such a political education of the whole people than at the moment we have reached.  For the triumph of the Charter, the constitutional government of Governor and Justiciar, had rested mainly on the helplessness of the king.  As boy or youth, Henry the Third had bowed to the control of William Marshal or Langton or Hubert de Burgh.  But he was now grown to manhood, and his character was from this hour to tell on the events of his reign.  From the cruelty, the lust, the impiety of his father the young king was absolutely free.  There was a geniality, a vivacity, a refinement in his temper which won a personal affection for him even in his worst days from some who bitterly censured his rule.  The Abbey-church of Westminster, with which he replaced the ruder minster of the Confessor, remains a monument of his artistic taste.  He was a patron and friend of men of letters, and himself skilled in the “gay science” of the troubadour.  But of the political capacity which was the characteristic of his house he had little or none.  Profuse, changeable, false from sheer meanness of spirit, impulsive alike in good and ill, unbridled in temper and tongue, reckless in insult and wit, Henry’s delight was in the display of an empty and prodigal magnificence, his one notion of government was a dream of arbitrary power.  But frivolous as the king’s mood was, he clung with a weak man’s obstinacy to a distinct line of policy; and this was the policy not of Hubert or Langton but of John.  He cherished the hope of recovering his heritage across the sea.  He believed in the absolute power of the Crown; and looked on the pledges of the Great Charter as promises which force had wrested from the king and which force could wrest back again.  France was telling more and more on English opinion; and the claim which the French kings were advancing to a divine and absolute power gave a sanction in Henry’s mind to the claim of absolute authority which was still maintained by his favourite advisers in the royal council.  Above all he clung to the alliance with the Papacy.  Henry was personally devout; and his devotion only bound him the more firmly to his father’s system of friendship with Rome.  Gratitude and self-interest alike bound him to the Papal See.  Rome had saved him from ruin as a child; its legate had set the crown on his head; its threats and excommunications had foiled Lewis and built up again a royal party.  Above all it was Rome which could alone free him from his oath to the Charter, and which could alone defend him if like his father he had to front the baronage in arms.

[Sidenote:  England and Rome]