Civil war looms

The sons of Belial (2)

On 2 August 1273 an order went out to all the sheriffs in England, instructing them to conduct themselves so the king ‘would not have to punish them’. On the same day a separate message was sent out to all the king’s subjects in every county, warning them to be diligent in the pursuit of criminals.

There was no king in England, as such. Henry III was dead and his heir far away in the Holy Land, so these orders were sent out by the regency government. The need for a king to provide strong centralized authority was all too apparent. Without him the realm fell to pieces. To make things worse, the courts were suspected of doing little to prevent the crime wave sweeping over England. There was even a suspicion that sheriffs and bailiffs were colluding with the ‘malefactors’ who committed robberies, homicides and other enormities in every county.

The arms of Gilbert de Clare

It didn’t help when the great magnates of the realm, who were supposed to help the regents keep order, got involved in wrongdoing. Gilbert de Clare, the ‘red earl’ of Gloucester was particularly shameless in this regard. In early 1273 a private war erupted in Staffordshire between Prince Edmund of Lancaster and Robert de Ferrers, the disinherited Earl of Derby. On 17 February Edmund wrote to the chancellor, Walter Merton, pleading for military aid against Ferrers.

The arms of Robert de Ferrers

Clare chose this moment to stick his oar in. Two days later he sent a letter to Merton, expressing concern at the behaviour of Edmund and Ferrers. There could be no peace in the land, Clare warned, unless the great lords settled their differences. A noble sentiment. At the same time Clare was in secret talks with Ferrers, and in May they sealed a pact whereby Ferrers agreed to surrender his stake in Gloucestershire if Clare would help him recover his lands in Staffordshire. This amounted to a joint declaration of war against Edmund.

The other magnates now started taking sides. Reynold de Grey, Roger Mortimer and Henry Lacy declared for Edmund. Earl Warenne, James Audley and John Fitz John declared for Ferrers. Another civil war - the third in little more than a decade - loomed on the horizon.