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Portrait of Henry III

Monarchs · Plantagenet

Henry III

1207–1272

House of Plantagenet — Westminster Abbey and the Barons' Wars

In office: 1216–1272

Crowned at Gloucester aged nine while a French prince held London, Henry III reigned for 56 years, one of the longest reigns in English history. His personal rule was marked by expensive foreign schemes, favour to his wife's Savoyard and his half-brothers' Poitevin relatives, and a reforming crisis that produced the Provisions of Oxford in 1258 and the Barons' Wars. Simon de Montfort captured him at Lewes in 1264 and summoned the parliament of 1265; Montfort was killed at Evesham, and the king spent his last years rebuilding Westminster Abbey around the shrine of Edward the Confessor.

How to spot them

  • ▸Crowned as a boy of nine at Gloucester, with William Marshal as regent
  • ▸Provisions of Oxford (1258) and Westminster (1259); Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester
  • ▸Lewes 1264 and Evesham 1265; the parliament of 1265 that summoned burgesses from the towns
  • ▸Devotee of Edward the Confessor; rebuilt Westminster Abbey in the French Gothic style and was the first king buried in it since the Confessor

In the reign

A coronation at Gloucester at the age of nine, using a plain gold circlet because the regalia had been lost in the Wash (1216)

28 October 1216; he was crowned again at Westminster in 1220.

Reforms forced on a king at Oxford, putting royal government under a council of fifteen and a thrice-yearly parliament (1258)

The Provisions of Oxford, extended by the Provisions of Westminster in 1259.

Capture at a Sussex battle that left an earl of Leicester ruling England in the king's name (1264)

Lewes, 14 May 1264; the Mise of Lewes handed the king and his son over as hostages.

A parliament summoned in the king's name to which two knights from each shire and two burgesses from each borough were called (1265)

Simon de Montfort's parliament, often called the first representative parliament in England.

The rebuilding of a royal abbey church in the new French Gothic manner, around a saint-king's new shrine (1245–1269)

Westminster Abbey; the relics were translated on 13 October 1269.

A pavement of porphyry, serpentine and coloured glass laid before a high altar by craftsmen brought from Rome (1268)

The Cosmati pavement at Westminster, uncovered and conserved in 2008.

An elephant given by the king of France, housed with a polar bear and a lion in the royal menagerie at the Tower (1255)

Drawn from life by Matthew Paris, the St Albans chronicler.

Burial in the coffin that had held the body of the saint-king he venerated (1272)

He died on 16 November 1272; his heart was later sent to Fontevraud.

Quick-fire facts

  • •He succeeded at nine on John's death; William Marshal, earl of Pembroke, was regent until 1219
  • •The 'Sicilian business' — buying the crown of Sicily for his son Edmund from the Pope — helped bankrupt and discredit him
  • •He married Eleanor of Provence in 1236; her Savoyard relatives and his Lusignan half-brothers were both resented
  • •Simon de Montfort was his brother-in-law, having married Henry's sister Eleanor
  • •The Dictum of Kenilworth (1266) allowed defeated rebels to buy back their lands
  • •The Treaty of Paris (1259) surrendered his claims to Normandy, Anjou and Poitou in return for holding Gascony as a duchy of France
  • •The Statute of Marlborough (1267) is the oldest piece of statute law still partly in force in the United Kingdom
  • •At 56 years his was the longest English reign until George III

Drill it — 9 cards

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Sources