Funding a Crusade

When Henry III's son Edmund Crouchback was 23 years old, he pledged to go on crusade with his brother, Edward, and a cousin, Henry of Almain (son of Henry III's brother, Richard of Cornwall; Henry would be killed three years later by relatives of Simon de Montfort).

Crusades cost money, of course, and that was a problem. The recent Second Barons' War had depleted the king's funds. Edward turned to his uncle, King Louis IX of France, for a loan. (Louis was already planning a Crusade against Tunis.) Edmund decided it was time to make a political marriage (to someone with wealth).

A wealthy countess, Isabel de Forz, had been widowed several years earlier. Henry arranged a marriage between his son and Isabel, but Edmund thought he would be better off marrying one of Isabel's daughters, and in early April 1269 he married Aveline de Forz, Countess of Aumale (arranged by Edmund's mother, Eleanor of Provence). Aveline was only ten years old, and the marriage couldn't be consummated until she was 14.

The 6th Earl of Derby, Robert de Ferrers, was unable to recover his lands financially after his participation in the Second Barons' War; his title was removed from him and given to Edmund. Edmund was already Earl of Leicester and Lancaster. This gave him some additional income.

By the summer of 1270, however, they had still not started on Crusade because Henry was vacillating about being absent from England. It was decided that Edward would lead the English. Edward and his people arrived in Tunis on 10 November 1270, but it was too late to help Louis. The Treaty of Tunis had been signed 11 days earlier after Louis died of an epidemic and the Crusade failed. Edward led his men to Palestine, arriving on 9 May 1271.

Edmund, however, left England for the Holy Land by March 1271, leaving Eleanor of Provence in charge of his estates. He stayed briefly with his maternal great uncle Philip I, Count of Savoy, and possibly met James of Saint George (a master mason who would later build castles in England for Edward).

Edmund joined Edward in September 1271 with an army that was expanded with the participation of Hugh III of Cypress. Unfortunately, despite a few successful attacks, the Crusade was outnumbered and eventually forced to concede defeat. Hugh III had to coexist with the other powers in the Eastern Mediterranean, and so signed a 10-year-treaty with the Mamluk sultan Baibars.

There is no contemporary account for why Edmund had the epithet "Crouchback." The idea that he had a hunchback is countered by contemporary chronicles that claim he was handsome and good at combat. The best theory historians have to offer is that the epithet is a corruption of the term "crossback," referring to the practice of stitching a cross onto the back of one's clothing to indicate being on Crusade.

Aveline died at the age of 15, childless, in 1274, and Edmund went looking for another wife. We'll talk about his later life tomorrow.

The Dictum of Kenilworth, Part 1

The end of the Second Barons' War required closure and reconciliation, and it came in the Dictum of Kenilworth, named for the castle in which the last rebels held out against royalist assault until Henry took a more diplomatic approach to ending the hostility.

The Dictum was put together by a commission, created by Parliament, comprising three bishops and three barons. Those six selected an additional bishop, two earls, and three additional barons. Participants included a few names we've run into before: Gilbert de Clare, 7th Earl of Gloucester, and John Balliol. They were told to come up with a plan by All Saints' Day (1 November). They announced their solution on 31 October 1266.

The chief aim of the Dictum was for Henry to regain his authority in defiance of the Provisions of Oxford that had been forced on him in exchange for raising the funds he wanted. It asserted his right to appoint his own ministers. He did re-affirm Magna Carta.

The rebels were all land-owning men, and their lands had been confiscated by the Crown. The Dictum offered a pardon for their rebellion and offered to restore their properties to them, but they had to buy them back. The price of purchase would depend on how deeply they were involved in the rebellion.

Was there a fair way to decide what a property was worth? The traditional method was to value it at ten times the value of its annual yield. The king offered them their lands back at only five times the annual yield. Not for everyone, though.

Robert Ferrers, Earl of Derby, who had been vicious in his murder of Jews (considered by the king in England to all be under Crown protection), was charged seven times the value of his lands' annual yields. The commander of Kenilworth Castle, Henry de Hastings, was also charged seven times.

If you had not taken up arms against the king but had been outspoken on the side of the rebels, you were fined at two times the value of the land. If you had been forced to fight by your liege lord you were fined just one year's worth.

This did not go smoothly, however. One of there king's supporters even tried to change his allegiance not long after. I'll explain tomorrow.

Second Barons' War Against the Jews

In February 1264, after the Mise of Amiens, the fighting between the forces of Simon de Montfort and King Henry III began in earnest. One of the biggest moves made by the rebels was the attacks on the Jews.

Part of the Provisions of Oxford created by the barons was demanding the cancellation of Jewish debts. Attacks on Jewish communities were devastating. Henry de Montfort and Robert Earl Ferrers led an attack that killed most of the Jews in Worcester. Robert had borrowed heavily from the Jews of Worcester. He plundered homes and religious houses and stole the records of loans.

Another of the rebels, John fitz John, was part of the attack on Jews in London where 500 were killed.  John fitz John was said to have killed two of the leading Jewish figures, Isaac son of Aaron and Cok son of Abraham, with his bare hands. There was no offering to the Jews the choice of converting to Christianity as was sometimes offered in the past (such as the story of Clifford's Tower, although that was a cruel lie). The records of the Domus Conversorum ("House of Converts") established by Henry for converted Jews show no Jews were admitted in that year. A few were sent to the Tower of London for incarceration.

Simon the Younger extended his anti-Jewish pogroms to Winchester, Lincoln, and Cambridge. Gilbert de Clare, the 7th Earl of Gloucester whose father had been a royalist but who decided to join the rebels once he gained the title, led the attacks on Jews in Canterbury (where a few Jewish women were forced to convert) and Northampton.

The chief goal was less religious than financial. Since the incident at Clifford's Tower, the Crown had established a method for keeping track of Jewish debt. It was easier for the king to tax the Jews whenever he needed money than to get it from the barons. The Crown therefore desired to have accurate records of who owed what to whom. Cities and towns with large Jewish populations maintained archa, chests in which records were kept that the king could check on any time. The attacks not only killed Jews, they destroyed the archa to erase any records of debt.

The tide for the Barons was starting to turn, however. See you tomorrow.