the Third was quick to declare his plan of
government. The two great checks on a merely personal rule lay as yet in
the authority of the great ministers of State and in the national character
of the administrative body which had been built up by Henry the Second.
Both of these checks Henry at once set himself to remove. He would be his
own minister. The Justiciar ceased to be the Lieutenant-General of the king
and dwindled into a presiding judge of the law-courts. The Chancellor had
grown into a great officer of State, and in 1226 this office had been
conferred on the Bishop of Chichester by the advice and consent of the
Great Council. But Henry succeeded in wresting the seal from him and naming
to this as to other offices at his pleasure. His policy was to entrust all
high posts of government to mere clerks of the royal chapel; trained
administrators, but wholly dependent on the royal will. He found equally
dependent agents of administration by surrounding himself with foreigners.
The return of Peter des Roches to the royal councils was the first sign of
the new system; and hosts of hungry Poitevins and Bretons were summoned
over to occupy the royal castles and fill the judicial and administrative
posts about the Court. The king's marriage in 1236 to Eleanor of Provence
was followed by the arrival in England of the new queen's uncles. The
"Savoy," as his house in the Strand was named, still recalls Peter of Savoy
who arrived five years later to take for a while the chief place at Henry's
council-board; another brother, Boniface, was consecrated on Archbishop
Edmund's death to the highest post in the realm save the Crown itself, the
Archbishoprick of Canterbury. The young Primate, like his brother, brought
with him foreign fashions strange enough to English folk. His armed
retainers pillaged the markets. His own archiepiscopal fist felled to the
ground the prior of St. Bartholomew-by-Smithfield who opposed his
visitation. London was roused by the outrage; on the king's refusal to do
justice a noisy crowd of citizens surrounded the Primate's house at Lambeth
with cries of vengeance, and the "handsome archbishop," as his followers
styled him, was glad to escape over sea. This brood of Provencals was
followed in 1243 by the arrival of the Poitevin relatives of John's queen,
Isabella of Angouleme. Aymer was made Bishop of Winchester; William of
Valence received at a later time the earldom of Pembroke. Even the king's
jester w