of Fifteen, chosen jointly by the barons and the king, and to limit the terms of his
chief officers. Yet even this government was riven by strife, and civil war erupted in
1264. At the battle of Lewes in the same year, the leader of the baronial opposition,
Simon de Montfort (c.1208–1265), routed the king’s forces, captured the king, and
became England’s de facto ruler.
By Simon’s time the distribution of wealth and power in England had changed
from the days of Magna Carta. Well-to-do merchants in the cities could potentially
buy out most knights and even some barons many times over. Meanwhile, in the
rural areas, the “knights of the shire” as well as some landholders below them were
rising in wealth and standing. These ancestors of the English gentry were politically
active: the knights of the shire attended local courts and served as coroners, sheriffs,
and justices of the peace, a new office that gradually replaced the sheriff’s. The
importance of the knights of the shire was clear to Simon de Montfort, who called a
parliament in 1264 that included them; when he summoned another parliament in
1265, he added, for the first time ever, representatives of the towns—the
“commons.” Even though Simon’s brief rule ended that very year and Henry’s son
Edward I (r.1272–1307) became a rallying point for royalists, the idea of
representative government in England had emerged, born of the interplay between
royal initiatives and baronial revolts. Under Edward, parliament met fairly regularly, a
by-product of the king’s urgent need to finance his wars against France, Wales, and
Scotland. “We strictly require you,” he wrote in one of his summonses to the sheriff
of Northamptonshire,
to cause two knights from [Northamptonshire], two citizens from each
city in the same county, and two burgesses from each borough, of those
who are especially discreet and capable of laboring, to be elected without
delay, and to cause them to come to us [at Westminster].^7
FRENCH MONARCHS AND THE “ESTATES”
French King Louis IX, unlike Henry III, was a born reformer. He approached his
kingdom as he did himself: with zealous discipline. As an individual, he was (by all
accounts) pious, dignified, and courageous. He attended church each day, diluted his
wine with water, and cared for the poor and sick (we have already seen his devotion
to lepers). Hatred of Jews and heretics followed as a matter of course. Twice Louis
