Henry III (born 1207; reigned from 1216-72 until his death) was king of England and son of King John of England. He is remembered as a man of pure morals and a patron of arts and architecture (he rebuilt Westminster Abbey).
But he was an autocrat like his father. His dreams of reclaiming the Angevin French possessions caused radical elements of Parliament to rebel and forced him to sign the Provisions of Oxford which put more limits to his power than the previous Magna Carta.
But what started as a reform movement turned into a coup. Henry was imprisoned and the "reformers" took charge led by Simon De Montfort. Henry's son Lord Edward escaped and eventually defeated the reformers. The rest of Henry's reign was uneventful except for the fact that Edward was by then ruling the country in all but name.
He once survived an assassination attempt when assassins came to his chambers to kill him...
because he was having sex with the Queen in her chambers and thus wasn't in his at the time.
He also kept a menagerie (a precursor to a zoo) at the Tower Of London, a tradition begun by his father, and his exotic specimens included an elephant, a leopard and a camel. A polar bear was presented to Henry III by King Haakon of Norway, which was said to have made a single ghostly return that caused the death of a Tower guardsman.
His lengthy reign of 56 years on the throne would be unmatched in British history until being surpassed by King George III nearly 500 years later.
Appearances In Media
- He is the central focus in an episode of Dan Jones's Britain's Bloodiest Dynasty, which focused on his feud with Simon De Montfort.
- The chronicler Matthew Paris depicted Henry's life in a series of illustrations, which he sketched and, in some cases, water-coloured, in the margins of the Chronica Majora. Paris first met Henry in 1236 and enjoyed being with the King, although he disliked many of Henry's actions as the illustrations are frequently unflattering.
- Henry appears in the second part of The Divine Comedy depicted sitting alone in purgatory, to one side of other failed rulers such as Rudolf I of Germany and Phillip III Of France.
- Henry appears in King John by William Shakespeare as a minor character referred to as Prince Henry.
- Longsword, Earl of Salisbury: An Historical Romance (1762) by Thomas Leland
- The Red Saint (1909) by Warwick Deeping
- The Outlaw of Torn (1927) by Edgar Rice Burroughs
- The De Montfort Legacy (1973) by Pamela Bennetts
- The Queen from Provence (1979) by Jean Plaidy
- The Marriage of Meggotta (1979) by Edith Pargeter
- Falls the Shadow (1988) by Sharon Kay Penman
