LECTURE XXII.-HENRY III. RELIGION AND EDUCATION. Gothic architecture and Westminster Abbey. Extortions of the Pope. The universities. Roger 1. HENRY III. was solemnly crowned at Gloucester by the Bishop of Winchester. Stephen Langton had been suspended by the Pope, and was out of the country; it was not till after Pope Innocent died that he was allowed to return; but when he came back he, as Archbishop of Canterbury, crowned the young king over again, and took a great share in the government. 1216. Henry III. 2. At the coronation Henry swore, as the kings usually did, that he would honour the Church, show strict justice to the people, abolish bad laws, and make good ones. Though he had as yet no power to keep or break these promises, being but nine years old, he had a very good guardian, William Marischal, Earl of Pembroke, who did all that could be done for the good of the nation. Of course one of the first things was to drive away the French. This was done without much trouble. Almost all the barons forsook the dauphin, who treated them with such contempt, and returned to their allegiance to the young king. There were two fights, one on land and one at sea; the English conquered both times, and Louis was obliged to ask for peace. The English, "who," says Roger, "desired beyond measure to be rid of him," soon made terms with him, and he on his part seems to have been thankful to get away. "Each and all gave one another the kiss of peace, many of them deceitfully. . . Louis was conducted with all speed to the sea-coast, and thence, in lasting ignominy, escaped to France." And this is what Shakespeare has to say about it : The dauphin sent away "This England never did, nor never shall, Now these her princes are come home again, And we shall shock them; nought shall make us rue 3. Henry III. had a long reign of fifty-six years. It was not a very peaceable one, though he grew up to be a harmless, well-meaning man, very different from his father. But he was not at all suited for those disturbed times, and by his dulness as well as his weak amiability he got into great disputes with his people. For the mere signing of Magna Charta by John was not enough in itself to settle the liberty of England; it took a great many more years of struggling before all those good resolutions could be kept and obeyed. We see how thoroughly right has conquered at last. All the abuses, the bribery, the tyranny, the injustice of all sorts which had prevailed before Magna Charta sound to us outrageous and even absurd. They have been so trodden down and abolished that we now look on them as a mere story of the past; but our forefathers had to battle for many long years to get them trodden down and abolished. Henry's character. 4. Henry III. had a great reverence for Edward the Confessor, and rather reminds us of him in several ways. He was religious, like him; he was gentle and refined; he liked music and poetry; his private life was very good, but he was not wise or strong. And, like Edward, he dearly loved foreigners, bringing them over in crowds, and making them bishops and lords in England. The English of his day liked this no better than Earl Godwine and the English of those days had done. 5. Moreover, he offended the people in one way which Edward the Confessor never did-by his taxes and greed for money. Edward, as we remember, had seen a little devil dancing on his money-bags, and had abolished the oppressive taxes. Poor Henry had not the eyes to see the same, and he went on coveting and extorting his subjects' money, till they had to rebel against him at last. 6. Some of the earliest acts of his reign were religious ones. He was much under the guidance of Archbishop Stephen, and very likely his great reverence for Edward the Confessor was partly learnt from him, for we know how he and the barons had wished for his laws back again. Probably they often talked to the young king about him, and when Henry grew to be a man he named his sons by the old English names of Edward and Edmund, names which had gone out of fashion after the Norman Conquest. 7. Another way he had of honouring Edward the Confessor we must feel to have been a very strange one. It was by pulling down his last beloved work, the old WestWestminster minster Abbey. Remarkable as it sounds, it was Abbey. really meant in that sense. Just at this time a new style of architecture had come into existence, perhaps the most beautiful of any that has ever been invented by man, which we call Gothic. The old Saxon or Norman architecture, with its thick, massive pillars and round, richly-decorated arches, was grand and solemn and beautiful; but the new Gothic, which had taller and more slender pillars and pointed arches, was also grand and solemn and still more beautiful. The Westminster Abbey which Henry III. built is the same we see and love so much now, the "loveliest thing in Christendom." When we look at it, when we walk along its stately aisles and look up to its lofty and shadowy roof, we feel that there were other thoughts in the hearts of the people of the middle ages besides the fighting and disputing which history books are full of-thoughts which they did not know how to put into words, but which breathe and live for us still in the unperishing stone. Lovely and sacred as we feel Westminster Abbey to be, we cannot help being grieved that Edward's old church, which had been thought so grand and wonderful in its day, and which, no doubt, was full of beauty and interest, was swept away. But those who destroyed it at least knew in the fulness of their hearts and their enthusiasm that they could do something better still, and would make a still worthier abode for the shrine of Edward the Confessor. Canterbury 8. Soon after the first stone of the Lady Chapel of Westminster Abbey was laid, the young king, who was now about thirteen years old, was taken to Canterbury, to a 1220. grand service in honour of Thomas à Becket. About fifty years before a great fire had burned down the finest part of Canterbury Cathedral. We should think that a terrible misfortune now, but we might not feel it quite so much as the people did then. It gives us another glimpse of the extraordinary sort of religious feeling there was in those days to see how they behaved on the occasion. "They tore their hair; they beat the walls and pavement of the church with their shoulders and the palms of their hands; they uttered tremendous curses against God and his saints; they wished they had rather died than have seen such a day." However, they soon set to work to repair the evil, and built it up again more splendid than before, filling the windows with painted glass, many of them being pictures of the miracles wrought at the tomb of St. Thomas. Next a most splendid shrine was made to contain his bones, and when all was complete the young king and a magnificent procession, with all the great lords, archbishops, bishops, and a great many Frenchmen and other foreigners, assembled to carry the new shrine to its resting-place. 9. With all this religious and artistic work, the archbishop was not the man to forget the liberty of the people and the Great Charter. When Henry was about fifteen the archbishop and the other nobles demanded of him to confirm it again. One of the king's counsellors objected, saying that the charter had been extorted by force, and the king ought not to be bound by it. But the archbishop was very indignant at this, and said angrily to the counsellor, "William, if you loved the king you would not disturb the peace of the kingdom." When the boyking saw the archbishop so angry he immediately promised to observe the charter, though he tried to escape from keeping this promise afterwards. 1228. Death of Stephen Langton. 10. After the archbishop's death troubles began to increase. For one thing, there was again a great dispute about who should succeed him, and again it was referred to the Pope to decide. This time the Pope determined to take the king's side, the reason of which was that he was in great want of money, and the king's party promised him an immense reward if he would favour them. We may be sure the Pope did not give out this motive. He sent letters full of the most wonderful compliments to the Church of Canterbury. He said "the most noble limb of the apostolic see;" it was "the paradise of pleasure and the garden of sweets;" it had in it "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" (by which he is said to have meant the archbishopric), and "the tree of life" (meaning the monks), and "from it flowed a miracle-working river" (the blood of Thomas à Becket). After all these compliments, he said he meant to place in that paradise the man whom the king recommended as archbishop. it was The Pope interferes again. 11. The reward the Pope got for this was a promise that he should have a tenth part of all the moveable property in England and Ireland. But this was rather easier to promise than to perform. For when the Pope's messengers came to England to get the money, "the earls, barons, and all the laity declared 1229. Papal extortions. plainly that they would not give it." The bishops and clergy, "after two or three days' deliberation, and no slight grumbling," were obliged to consent, lest they should be excommunicated. The Pope's chaplain exacted what he could get in such a harsh and unjust way that it increased the "grumbling" very much; he even made the clergy pay the tenth part of the value of the corn which was still growing green in the fields. The bishops had to sell or pawn the sacred sacramental cups and other valuables out of the churches, and Roger says that only "one circumstance gave some slight consolation and comfort," which was, that other countries were in the same plight as themselves, and were being taxed and tormented in the same way by the head of the Christian Church. 12. All through this long reign we come upon the same thing over and over again-the extortions of the Pope. One day there were some English clergymen at Rome whom the Pope saw; they were very handsomely dressed; more especially, they had their vestments trimmed with some fine gold fringe, which pleased the Pope's eyes greatly. He asked where this splendid fringe was made; and when he heard it was in England, he exclaimed, "Of a truth England is a garden of delights; truly it is an inexhaustible well, in which many things abound; from which many things may be extorted." So he immediately sent out "sacred letters " to the abbots in England forthwith to send him some of this golden fringe to ornament his own vestments, but sent no money to pay for it. The poor English abbots had to do that part of the business, "but it struck many with detestation of the evident avarice of the Roman Church," says Matthew Paris, another monk of St. Alban's, who tells us this story. All the men who wrote histories at this time were monks, but when we read what they say about the avarice and extortion of the Pope and his people, we could imagine their narratives had been written by the most vigorous Protestants. 13. Although even yet there was no difference of belief in England, there is little doubt that all this helped to pave the way for the Reformation by alienating the hearts of the people, and doing away their respect for the Pope. Not content with always grasping for money, the Pope also sent Italian clergymen to take possession of the best livings in England. Indignation People began to rise up against this. Letters were England. sent all over the country to all the bishops and clergy, urging them to resist. Nobody could exactly say in |