llowed to return to his chapel. However, the levies of
Essex surrounded the precincts, and he was soon forced by hunger to
surrender. He offered to submit himself to the king's will, and was for
a second time confined in the Tower. On November 10, he was brought
before a not unfriendly tribunal, in which the malice of the new
justiciar was tempered by the baronial instincts of the Earls of
Cornwall, Warenne, Pembroke, and Lincoln. He made no effort to defend
himself, and submitted absolutely to the judgment of the king. It was
finally agreed that he should be allowed to retain the lands which he
had inherited from his father, and that all his chattels and the lands
that he had acquired himself should be forfeited to the crown. Further,
he was to be kept in prison in the castle of Devizes under the charge
of the four earls who had tried him.
Peter des Roches was soon in difficulties. The earls who had saved
Hubert began to oppose the whole administration. Their leader was
Richard, Earl of Pembroke, the second son of the great regent, and
since his brother's death head of the house of Marshal. Richard was
bitterly prejudiced against the king and his courtiers by an attempt to
refuse him his brother's earldom. A gallant warrior, handsome and
eloquent, pious, upright, and well educated, Richard, the best of the
marshal's sons, stood for the rest of his short life at the head of the
opposition. He incited his friends to refuse to attend a council
summoned to meet at Oxford, on June 24, 1233. The king would have
sought to compel their presence, had not a Dominican friar, Robert
Bacon, when preaching before the court, warned him that there would be
no peace in England until Bishop Peter and his son were removed from
his counsels. The friar's boldness convinced him that disaffection was
widespread, and he promised the magnates at a later council at London
that he would, with their advice, correct whatever he found there was
need to reform. Meanwhile the Poitevins brought into England fresh
swarms of hirelings from their own land, and Peter des Roches urged
Henry to crush rebellion in the bud. As a warning to greater offenders,
Gilbert Basset was deprived of a manor which he had held since the
reign of King John, and an attempt was made to lay violent hands upon
his brother-in-law, Richard Siward. The two barons resisted, whereupon
all their estates were transferred to Peter of Rivaux. Yet Richard
Marshal still continued to hop
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