HENRY III., king of England from 1216 to 1272, eldest son of King John; succeeded to the throne at the age of nine; during his minority the kingdom was wisely and faithfully served by the Earl of Pembroke and Hubert de Burgh; when he came to years he proved himself a weak ruler, and, according to Stubbs, his administration was “one long series of impolitic and unprincipled acts”; with the elevation of Peter des Roches, a native of Anjou, to the post of chief adviser, French interlopers soon became predominant at the Court, and the recipients of large estates and pensions, an injustice further stimulated by the king’s marriage with Eleanor of Provence; justice was prostituted, England humiliated under a feeble foreign policy, and the country finally roused by infamous exactions; Simon de Montfort, the king’s own brother-in-law, became the leader of the people and the champion of constitutional rights; by the Provisions of Oxford, forced upon the king by Parliament assembled at Oxford (1258), a wider and more frequent Parliamentary representation was given to the people, and the king’s power limited by a permanent council of 15; as an issue of the Barons’ War, which resulted in the defeat and capture of the king at Lewes (1264), these provisions were still further strengthened by the Mise of Lewes, and from this time may be dated the birth of representative government in England as it now exists; in 1265 was summoned the first Parliament as at present constituted, of peers temporal and spiritual, and representatives from counties, cities, and boroughs; internal dissensions ceased with the victory of Prince Edward over the barons at Eastham (1265), the popular leader De Montfort perished on the field (1206-1272).

HENRY IV., king of England from 1399 to 1418, first of the Lancastrian kings, son of John of Gaunt, and grandchild of Edward III., born at Bolingbroke, in Lincolnshire; Richard II.’s misrule and despotism had damped the loyalty of his people, and when Henry came to England to maintain his ducal rights he had little difficulty in deposing Richard, and, with the consent of Parliament, in assuming the crown; this act of usurpation—­for Richard’s true heir was Roger Mortimer, a descendant of an older branch of the family—­had two important results; it made Henry more obsequious to the Parliamentary power which had placed him on the throne, and it was the occasion of the bloody Wars of the Roses that were to devastate the kingdom during the reigns of Henry VI. and Edward IV.; Henry’s own reign was a troubled one; wars were successfully undertaken against the Welsh under Owen Glendower and against the Scotch; while rebellion was raised by the Percies in unsuccessful attempts to win the crown for Mortimer; the only law of importance passed was the statute for burning heretics, the first passed in England for the suppression of religious opinion (1366-1413).