the king ordered his brother to
do justice to the man, and restore him to his rights: the earl said that
he would not submit to these orders, till the cause should be decided
against him by the judgment of his peers: Henry replied, that it was
first necessary to reinstate Waleran in possession, before the cause
could be tried; and he reiterated his orders to the earl.[*] We may
judge of the state of the government, when this affair had nearly
produced a civil war The earl of Cornwall, finding Henry peremptory in
his commands, associated himself with the young earl of Pembroke who
had married his sister, and who was displeased on account of the
king's requiring him to deliver up some royal castles which were in his
custody. These two malecontents took into the confederacy the earls of
Chester, Warrenne, Glocester, Hereford, Warwick, and Ferrers, who were
all disgusted on a like account. [**] They assembled an army, which the
king had not the power or courage to resist; and he was obliged to give
his brother satisfaction, by grants of much greater importance than the
manor, which had been the first ground of the quarrel.[***]

The character of the king, as he grew to man's estate, became every
day better known; and he was found in every respect unqualified for
maintaining a proper sway among those turbulent barons, whom the feudal
constitution subjected to his authority. Gentle, humane, and merciful
even to a fault, he seems to have been steady in no other circumstance
of his character; but to have received every impression from those who
surrounded him, and whom he loved, for the time, with the most imprudent
and most unreserved affection. Without activity or vigor, he was unfit
to conduct war; without policy or art, he was ill fitted to maintain
peace: his resentments, though hasty and violent, were not dreaded,
while he was found to drop them with such facility; his friendships
were little valued, because they were neither derived from choice,
nor maintained with constancy: a proper pageant of state in a regular
monarchy, where his ministers could have conducted all affairs in his
name and by his authority; but too feeble in those disorderly times
to sway a sceptre, whose weight depended entirely on the firmness and
dexterity of the hand which held it.

* M. Paris, p. 233.

** M. Paris, p. 233.

*** M. Paris, p. 233.

The ablest and most virtuous minister that Henry ever possessed was
Hubert de Bu