Through my burn'd bosom; nor entreat the north P. Hen. O, that there were some virtue in my tears, K. John. The salt in them is hot. Within me is a hell; and there the poison Is, as a fiend, confin'd to tyrannize On unreprievable condemned blood. Enter the Bastard. Bast. O, I am scalded with my violent motion, K. John. O cousin, thou art come to set mine eye Bast. The dauphin is preparing hitherward; As I upon advantage did remove, Were in the washes, all unwarily Devoured by the unexpected flood, Sal. You breathe these dead news in as dead an ear.My liege! my lord !-But now a king-now thus. P. Hen. Even so must I run on, and even so stop. What surety of the world, what hope, what stay When this was now a king, and now is clay! Bast. Art thou gone so ? I do but stay behind To do the office for thee of revenge; And then my soul shall wait on thee to heaven, As it on earth hath been thy servant still. Now, now, you stars, that move in your right spheres, Where be your powers? Show now your mended faiths, And instantly return with me again, To push destruction, and perpetual shame, Out of the weak door of our fainting land: Straight let us seek, or straight we shall be sought; Sal. It seems, you know not then so much as we The cardinal Pandulph is within at rest, Who half an hour since came from the dauphin; Bast. He will the rather do it, when he sees Sal. Nay, it is in a manner done already; To the sea-side, and put his cause and quarrel With whom yourself, myself, and other lords, To consummate this business happily. Bast. Let it be so :-And you, my noble prince, P. Hen. At Worcester must his body be interr'd; Bast. Thither shall it then. And happily may your sweet self put on To whom, with all submission, on my knee, I do bequeath my faithful services And true subjection everlastingly. Sal. And the like tender of our love we make, To rest without a spot for evermore. P. Hen. I have a kind soul, that would give you thanks, And knows not how to do it, but with tears. Bast. O, let us pay the time but needful woe, But when it first did help to wound itself. Now these her princes are come home again, Come the three corners of the world in arms, And we shall shock them: Nought shall make us rue, [Exeunt. Henry III., surnamed of Winchester, from the place of his birth, was the eldest son of king John, by his queen Isabella of Angoulême, and was born 1st October, 1206. His father having died 18th October, 1216, the boy was chiefly through the influence of the earl of Pembroke, lord marshal, acknowledged heir to the throne by those of the barons who were opposed to the French party; and on the 28th he was solemnly crowned in the abbey-church of St. Peter, at Gloucester, by the papal legate Gualo. His reign is reckoned from that day. On the 11th November following, at a great council held at Bristol, Pembroke was appointed protector or governor of the king and kingdom (Rector Regis et Regni); and this able and excellent nobleman continued at the head of affairs till his death in May, 1219; long before which event the dauphin Louis and the French had been compelled to quit the country, their evacuation having been finally arranged in a conference held at Kingston 11th September, 1217. After the death of Pembroke the administration of the government fell into the hands of Hubert de Burgh, who had greatly distinguished himself in the expulsion of the foreigners, and Peter des Roches, bishop of Winchester. De Burgh however and the bishop, who was not an Englishman, but a native of Poitou, from coadjutors soon became rivals, and their attempts to throw each other down at length led, in 1224, to the resignation of Des Roches and his retirement from the kingdom. Meanwhile, on the 17th May, 1220, Henry, in consequence of some doubts being entertained about the efficacy of the former ceremony, had been crowned a second time at Westminster, by Langton, archbishop of Canterbury. In 1221 the relations of peace and alliance with Scotland, which had subsisted ever since the departure of the French, were made closer and firmer by the marriages of Alexander II., the king of that country, with Jane, Henry's eldest sister, and of De Burgh- with the Princess Margaret, the eldest sister of Alexander. About the same time Pandulf, who had succeeded Gualo as papal legate, left the country, which was thus practically freed from the domination of Rome, although that power still persisted in asserting theoretically the vassalage of the crown which had been originally conceded by John, and which had also been acknowledged at his accession by the present king. In 1222 Henry had been declared of age to exercise at least certain of the functions of government; but his feeble character was already become sufficiently apparent, and this formality gave him no real power. It only served to enable De Burgh the more easily to get rid of his colleague. That minister, now left alone at the head of affairs, conducted the government with ability and success on the whole, though in a spirit of severity, which, whether necessary or not, could not fail to make him many enemies. A war broke out with France in 1225, which however was carried on with little spirit on either side, and produced no events of note, although Henry, in May, 1230, conducted in person an expedition to the Continent, from which great things were expected by himself and his subjects; but he returned home in the following October, without having done anything. At this time France was suffering under the usual weakness and distraction of a regal minority, Louis IX., afterwards designated St. Louis, having, while yet only in his twelfth year, succeeded his father in 1226. A growing opposition to De Burgh was at length headed by Richard, earl of Cornwall, the king's brother, who possessed very great influence, not only from his nearness to the throne, but from his immense wealth; and the consequence was the sudden expulsion of that minister from all his offices, and his consignment to prison, with the loss of all his honours and estates, in the latter part of the year 1232. Des Roches, the bishop of Winchester, who had returned to the country some time before this crisis, was now placed at the head of affairs; but his administration, a course of insulting preference for his countrymen and other foreigners, and of open hostility to the great charter and the whole body of the national liberties, speedily proved unbearably distasteful to both barons and commons; and a confederacy of the laity and the clergy, with Edmund, archbishop of Canterbury, at its head, compelled his dismissal within little more than a year after his restoration to power. The archbishop now became chief minister. In 1236 Henry, being now in his thirtieth year, married Eleanor, the daughter of Raymond, count of Provence; and this connection soon gave new and great umbrage to the nation, in consequence of the numbers of her relations and countrymen who came over with or followed the queen, and with whom she surrounded her weak husband, besides inducing him to gratify their rapacity with pensions, estates, honours, and the most lucrative offices in the kingdom. In the midst of the contests thus occasioned between the crown and the nobility, whose meetings for deliberation on national affairs were now commonly called parliaments, a renewal of active hostilities with France was brought about through a private resentment of Henry's mother Isabella, who, after the death of John, had returned and been re-married to Hugh, count of La Marche, to whom she had been espoused before she gave her hand to John: she had instigated La Marche to insult and defy Alphonse, count of Poitou, the brother of the French king, after doing homage to him, and had then prevailed upon her son, the king of England, to take her part in the war with France that ensued. Henry again sailed for the Continent; but this expedition was still more unfortunate and disgraceful than the former after being beaten by Louis in a succession of actions, he was glad to get home again, with the loss of army, money, baggage, and everything. A new truce for five years was then agreed to between the two countries. These events of course did not tend to put the nation in better humour with the king, or to dispose the parliament to greater liberality. The contest with the crown however ended for the present in an attempt on the part of Henry to govern by the prerogative, which was so far successful that no effective resistance was made to it for many years. In the pressure of his embarrassments he several times reassembled the legislative body, but no accommodation was effected by these advances; the parliament was found as impracticable as ever, and the king resumed his arbitrary courses. In 1253 he succeeded in obtaining a grant of money by consenting to a solemn ratification of the great charters; a ceremony which had already been repeatedly performed in the course of the reign; and this enabled him to proceed at the head of a military force to Guienne, where a revolt against the English dominion had been excited by Alphonso, king of Castile. The dispute was soon settled by the arrangement of a marriage between Henry's eldest son Prince Edward, and Eleanor, the sister of Alphonso. After this Henry engaged in a project which speedily involved him in a complication of difficulties-the acceptance of the nominal crown of Sicily for his second son Edmund, from pope Innocent IV., who pretended to have it at his disposal in consequence of Frederick II., the late king, having died (A.D. 1250) in a state of excommunication, and who had ever since been hawking about the empty title among the princes of Europe, without finding any one simple enough to close with his proposals till he applied to the king of England. The exorbitant extent to which Henry was forced to carry his exactions in order to meet his engagements with the pontiff raised a spirit of resistance, which grew stronger and stronger, till it broke out into an open revolt against the supremacy of the crown. What is called by most of the old chroniclers 'the mad parliament' assembled at Oxford, 11th June, 1258, by adjournment from Westminster, where it had met on the 2nd of May previous; and placed the whole authority of the state in the hands of a committee of government, consisting of twelve persons appointed by the barons and as many by the king. The leader of the barons on this occasion was the famous Simon de Montfort, who was a Frenchman by birth, being the youngest son of the Count de Montfort, but who, in right of his mother, had succeeded to the English earldom of Leicester, and had so long ago as the year 1238 married Eleanor, countess dowager of Pembroke, and sister of king Henry. After the enjoyment however of a long course of court favour he had quarrelled with and been insulted by his royal brother-in-law in 1252, and although they had been apparently reconciled, it is probable that the feelings then excited had never been extinguished in either. From the imperfect accounts and the partial temper of the annalists of the time, it is difficult to obtain a clear view of De Montfort's character and objects; but if his position may be reasonably suspected to have acted upon him with its natural temptations, and led him to form designs more ambitious than he could venture openly to profess, it must be admitted that he stands remarkably free from any well-established or even probable imputation affecting his actual conduct, and that he was undoubtedly a person both of eminent ability and of many excellent as well as popular moral qualities. His cause was also undoubtedly in the main that of the national liberties, and he appears to have had throughout the national voice and heart with him. He and his friends soon contrived to monopolize the whole power of the committee of governmert, and compelled the principal nominees of the king not only to relinquish their functions, but to fly from the kingdom. Dissensions now however broke out in the dominant party, and De Montfort found a rival aspirant to the supreme power in another of the great barons, Richard de Clare earl of Gloucester. The quarrels of the adverse factions enabled Henry, in the beginning of the year 1261, altogether to throw off the authority of the committee of government; and although the parliamentary party was on this occasion joined by Prince Edward, it was for the present effectually put down, De Montfort himself being obliged to take refuge in France. He returned however in April, 1263, and being now supported by Gilbert, earl of Gloucester, the son of his late rival, proceeded to prosecute his quarrel with the crown by force of arms. Henry had now his son Edward on his side; but the success of the insurgents nevertheless was such as to threaten the complete overthrow of the royal power, when an accommodation was effected through the interference of the king's younger brother, Richard, earl of Cornwall, called King of the Romans, to which dignity he had been elected a few years before. The result was to place De Montfort and his friends once more at the head of affairs, the king being reduced to a cipher, or a mere puppet in their hands. In the course of a few months however we find the war between the two parties renewed. The contest of arms was suspended for a short time in the beginning of the following year (1264) by an appeal on the part of a number of the most influential barons and bishops to the arbitration of Louis IX. of France; but his award, which was upon the whole favourable to Henry, was very soon disregarded. On the 14th of May the forces of the barons, led by De Montfort, and those of the royalists, commanded by the king in person, and by his son Edward, met at Lewes, in Sussex, where the former gained a complete victory, both Henry and his son being taken prisoners. This success of course once more placed all the power of the kingdom at the feet of the great baronial leader. His arrogance and assumption of superiority however, it is said, had already alienated from him some of his most powerful adherents, and disposed them to take measures for the restoration of the royal authority, when, on the Thursday of Whitsun-week, 1265, Prince Edward contrived to make his escape from Dover Castle, and to join the earl of Gloucester, who had now deserted the interest of De Montfort, and waited to receive him with an army at Ludlow in Shropshire. This event immediately led to the renewal of the war. On the 4th of August the two parties again encountered at Evesham; Edward here gave brilliant proof of the military talent which distinguished his future career; and the result was the defeat of the baronial forces with immense slaughter, De Montfort himself and his son Henry being both in the number of the slain. In this battle the king is said to have had a narrow escape; the earl, in whose camp he was, had compelled him to put on armour and mount a war-horse, from which he was thrown down in one of the charges, and would probably have been put to the sword or trampled to death had he not called out that he was 'Harry of Winchester,' when his voice was heard by his son, who came up and rescued him. The victory of Evesham however, although it liberated Henry and re-established the royal government, did not completely put down the defeated party. The adherents of De Montfort maintained themselves, notwithstanding all the efforts of Prince Edward, in various parts of the kingdom, for more than two years longer. Even after the parliament, in October, 1267, had passed an Act of Concord, known by the name of the 'Dictum de Kenilworth,' by which easy terms of pardon were offered to all who would submit themselves, the insurrection was renewed by the people of London, with the earl of Gloucester at their head; but that rash and fickle personage almost immediately threw himself upon the king's mercy without |