Henry of Almain
Henry of Almain (also Henry of Cornwall ; born November 2, 1235 , † March 13, 1271 in Viterbo ) was an English courtier. Henry of Almain came from the English royal family Plantagenet . He was the second but eldest surviving son of Richard of Cornwall and his first wife Isabel , the widow of Gilbert de Clare, 4th Earl of Hertford and daughter of William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke and Isabel de Clare . His father was a younger son of King John Ohneland , making Henry a nephew of King Henry III of England . was.
Childhood and youth
Shortly after his birth, Henry was baptized by Bishop Ralph of Maidstone of Hereford at Hailes Manor , an estate of his father . His mother died as early as 1240, and when his father set out on the crusade in June of that year , he placed Henry in the care of the king. To this end, his father commissioned the abbots of Wardon and Beaulieu as well as his official Robert of Astill with the spiritual education of his son. In December 1240, Henry lived at Windsor Castle with his cousin Lord Edward , the king's eldest son, and other noble children . He probably spent at least part of his childhood in France, as one can conclude from a later invitation from the French Queen Margaret , who is related to him . In 1247 and 1250 he accompanied his father to France, where he traveled as the ambassador of the English king, and in 1254 he was in Boulogne . It is said that his father gave him the Honor of Knaresborough in Yorkshire shortly before he left for Germany in 1257, where he had been elected King of Rome . Henry accompanied his father to Germany, where he on 18 May 1257 by the latter in a ceremony in Aachen for Knight was beaten. He then moved up the Rhine with his father before returning to England at the end of September without his father.
Role in the war of the barons
Provisions of Oxford
In April 1258 there was a rebellion of the nobility against Henry III in England. In June 1258 a reform program for the government was to be passed during the Parliament in Oxford, the Provisions of Oxford , through which the king would in large parts be disempowered. Henry took part in parliament and spoke out against the commission. However, he did not join his cousin Eduard and the king's Lusignan half-brothers, who holed up with their supporters in Winchester in protest of the commission . Henry was named by the king as a member of the 24-member committee that was supposed to hear complaints about civil servants under the Oxford Provisions. Henry refused, however, to swear by the commission. Since he himself had no possessions in England, he argued, his father's consent was required for his oath. He was then reluctantly given forty days to seek his father's approval for an oath on the commission.
Steady attitude between the king and the opposition of the nobility
In the spring of 1259, Henry had to borrow £ 100 from income from the confiscated property of his cousin William de Valence. Apparently he had financial problems during this time, as his father was in Germany and spent considerable funds there as the Roman-German king. Henry wavered between the king's side and the opposition to the nobility over the next several years. In March 1259, Henry made an alliance with the heir to the throne, Lord Eduard, and with his half-brother Richard de Clare, 5th Earl of Hertford . However, this alliance for mutual advice and assistance broke only a few months later, so that Henry and Lord Eduard concluded a similar agreement with Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester in October 1259 . Montfort, who was one of the leaders of the aristocratic opposition, received support from younger members of the royal family in his fight against the king. In April 1260 Henry was sent back to London to negotiate with the barons as the king's lawyer, and in June 1260 the king granted him an annual pension of £ 100. In October 1260, however, he gave himself up as agent of Simon de Montfort in his role as Royal Steward . From 1262 he supported Barons Simon de Montfort during the first battles of the Second War . Although he took part in negotiations with the French king at the invitation of the king in Paris in February 1263, he again openly supported Montfort in May 1263. In June or July 1263, he traveled to France as a supporter of Montfort, possibly with the intention of harassing exiled royal official John Mansel . However , he was captured in Wissant or Boulogne by Ingram de Fiennes , a relative of the English Queen Eleanor. However, his father immediately campaigned for his release, and the aristocratic opposition also demanded his release as one of the conditions that the king and Lord Edward had to meet for a peace agreement. Henry was released before July 10, 1263. However, within a month he switched sides again and supported the king. The latter appointed him administrator of Corfe and Sherborne Castle before July 26th . For this he is said to have been bribed by Lord Edward, who promised him the Honor of Tickhill . Henry is said to have promised Montfort never to fight him, to which Montfort is said to have replied that he did not want Henry's weapons, but his stability.
Role in the Second War of the Barons
In August 1263, Henry was a member of the king's embassy that negotiated peace with the Welsh. In the same year he accompanied the king to Amiens , where in early 1264 the French King Louis IX. made his award, the Mise of Amiens , on the legality of the Provisions of Oxford. When the latter rejected the Provisions of Oxford, Montfort began an open civil war. In the spring of 1264, Henry first took part in the campaign of Lord Edward, with which he wanted to lift the siege of Gloucester by the rebels. He then belonged to the king's army and was captured along with the king and his father after the Battle of Lewes on May 14th. Together with the also captured Lord Eduard, he served as a hostage until Montfort saw his demands fully met. This included a peace with Heinrich III. allied France, so that Henry several times as envoy to Louis IX. was sent. The English bishops vouched for 20,000 marks that he would return from France and be held hostage at Montfort. During a trip in September 1264, Henry was detained again in Boulogne, while his credentials were removed from him. Back in England, he was no longer held in Wallingford Castle from November 1264 , but in the safe Kenilworth Castle . On March 10, 1265 he was to be released from the supervision of Henry de Montfort , a son of Simon de Montfort, and transferred to the court of Henry III. to return. However, when Lord Eduard escaped his guards, Henry was taken hostage again. In April 1265 he traveled again as envoy to France. In mid-May the barons demanded his immediate return, but he presumably stayed in France and therefore did not take part in the renewed fighting and the Battle of Evesham , in which the royal party won a complete victory over the barons.
The king retaliated after his victory by expropriating the rebels. Henry also received various possessions from the defeated rebels, including all of Gilbert de Gant's . In addition, he claimed the Honor of Tickhill, which Lord Eduard had already promised him, the Honor of Peak and again Castle Corfe. In February 1266 he was in command of royal troops that were supposed to pacify northern England, and on May 15, 1266 he was able to beat the rebels under Robert de Ferrers at the Battle of Chesterfield and capture Ferrers.
In August 1266 he served together with the papal legate Ottobono as a mediator who negotiated with the Dictum of Kenilworth , according to which former rebels could buy back their properties. Although he himself had extensive land claims, he advocated relatively mild conditions in favor of the rebels, something his father might have advised him to do. In February 1267 his father, who still claimed the title of Roman-German King, sent him to Rome as an envoy. In 1268 he was involved in the negotiations through which his nephew Gilbert de Clare was moved to give up the occupation of London and which ended the war of the barons. During this time he advocated together with Lord Eduard the organization of tournaments, which because of the rejection by Henry III. and had not been held for years because of the war of the barons.
Henry of Almain and the Prince Edward's Crusade
Together with Lord Eduard Henry made a crusade vows on June 24, 1268 in Northampton . Over the next few months, however, he initially served as Edward's agent, who controlled the administration of his estates in Ireland. In 1268, Eduard and Henry worked together to convince the royal council to issue an ordinance that limited the amount of interest paid by Jewish moneylenders. This was one of the first signs of the future king's anti-Semitism .
After the first marriage negotiations had already taken place in 1265, Henry married Konstance († 1310) on May 21, 1269 in a splendid wedding in Windsor , the widow of Alfons , Prince of Aragon and daughter of Gaston de Béarn and his first wife Mathe, Vicomtesse de Marsan . This marriage was supposed to strengthen the claims of the English kings to Gascony , at the same time the marriage was supposed to thwart the claims of the surviving sons of Simon de Montfort to Bigorre in Gascony, since Constance had inheritance claims to Bigorre. In May 1269, Henry was also awarded the administration of Rockingham Castle and the royal woods between Oxford and Stamford in exchange for the maintenance of Corfe Castle . In 1269 he was involved in the agreement according to which Robert Ferrers, who had been in captivity since 1266, wrote over most of his property to Edmund, the king's younger son, for his release. In order to get his goods back, Ferrers was to pay the unavailable sum of £ 50,000 as a ransom, so that with this agreement he practically had to forego most of his goods. Between May and August 1269, Henry negotiated with the French king in Paris about the participation of Lord Edward in the planned crusade. Henry made an agreement with Lord Edward about the knights and soldiers he wanted to provide for the crusade. Henry actually provided his own crusade contingent due to the number of his troops, with the king supporting him financially. In August 1270, Henry set out with his contingent and most of the crusader army from England. When they reached Sicily in early 1271, Lord Edward sent him to France. There he was supposed to attend the funeral of the French King Louis IX, who died during his crusade to Tunis . take part. To this end, he should try to negotiate a peace with the surviving sons of Simon de Montfort, who in the meantime held important offices with Karl von Anjou , brother of Louis IX, ruler of Sicily and parts of central Italy.
assassination
During Lent, Henry reached Viterbo , where the conclave for the election of the Pope was taking place at that time and where Charles of Anjou was also staying. There he met Guy and Simon de Montfort the Younger , who had reached the city on March 12, 1271. When Henry attended mass in the church of San Silvestro (today Chiesa di Gesù ) on the morning of March 13th , he met the two brothers who dragged him in front of the church and stabbed him. Henry is said to have asked for mercy, but Guy de Montfort only replied that he had also known no mercy for his father and brothers who fell at Evesham, and he killed him. According to this, Guy and his followers are said to have mutilated Henry's body, much like Earl Simon de Montfort's body was mutilated after the Battle of Evesham.
Aftermath
The murder was probably rash and out of sudden anger, but the causes of the hatred were likely Henry's change of side in 1263, the misfortune that Montfort's family had suffered since then, and possibly Henry's marriage, which prevented Montfort's hereditary claims in Gascony. The bloody act was shocking to contemporaries in France, England and Italy and was carried out by his father Richard and Henry III. deeply mourned. Since Guy de Montfort had allies in Italy and the papal chair was vacant at the time of the murder, the killers were able to escape. Simon died in the same year, Guy de Montfort remained on the run for the next few years and was excommunicated. Dante recorded the murder in his Inferno, the first part of the Divine Comedy , according to which Guy de Montfort stands in the seventh circle of Hell together with other murderers in a river of boiling blood, framed by a mural depicting the gruesome act of 1271.
Henry's entrails were buried in Viterbo Cathedral, his body was transferred to England, where his bones were buried on May 21, 1271 in front of the high altar of Hailes Abbey, which his father had donated . His heart was buried in a heart burial at Westminster Abbey in or near the new shrine for Edward the Confessor , for whom he had donated property in Westminster before setting out on the crusade .
Henry's marriage had been childless. His claim to the titles and lands of his father went to his younger half-brother Edmund , his own lands with the Honors of Tickhill and Peak fell to Lord Edward and were initially administered by Queen Eleonore . His widow Constance de Béarn received an annual pension of £ 100 from the king on the income from these lands. She later claimed, as heiress of William Marshal, a share of the income from the customs duties from Bordeaux and the Honor of Tickhill as a Wittum , which you also from 1274 to 1279 was partially granted. In 1279 she married Count Aymon II of Geneva , who died in 1280. Thereupon she was again granted Tickhill in 1284. When she sided with France during the Franco-English War , she lost Tickhill. Only after the peace treaty was she again mistress of Tickhill in 1304 until her death in 1310.
literature
- Robin Studd: The marriage of Henry of Almain and Constance of Béarn . In: Thirteenth century England: proceedings of the Newcastle upon Tyne conference, Newcastle upon Tyne 1989 , ed. by Peter R. Coss and Simon D. Lloyd, 3 (1991), Boydell, Woodbridge 1991. ISBN 0-85115-548-0 , pp. 161-177
Web links
- Henry of Almaine on thepeerage.com , accessed July 26, 2015.
- Nicholas Vincent: Henry of Almain (1235-1271). In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of 2004
Individual evidence
- ^ William Arthur Shaw: The Knights of England. Volume 2, Sherratt and Hughes, London 1906, p. 5.
- ^ Michael Prestwich: Edward I. University of California, Berkeley 1988, ISBN 0-520-06266-3 , p. 69
- ↑ Westminster Abbey: Henry of Almayne. Retrieved April 20, 2016 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Henry of Almain |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | English courtier |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 2, 1235 |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 13, 1271 |
| Place of death | Viterbo |