(Hubert de Burgh rose from obscure beginnings to become on...)
Hubert de Burgh rose from obscure beginnings to become one of the most powerful men in England. He loyally served first King John and then the young Henry III and played a crucial role in saving the Plantagenet dynasty when it was at its most vulnerable. During King Johns disastrous wars in France, Hubert held Chinon castle against the besieging French for a whole year. He remained loyal when the Barons rebelled against John and, when they invited French invaders to intervene, Hubert successfully held Dover Castle for the king against a siege led by the French Prince Louis. After Johns death, he held it for the new king, 9-year old Henry, against a renewed siege. In August 1217 he struck the final blow against the French invasion, which still held London, when he defeated a powerful fleet carrying French reinforcements at the naval Battle of Sandwich. Hubert continued to serve Henry III, making important reforms as Justiciar of England and leading military campaigns against the Welsh Prince Lewellyn. He eventually lost favor due to the machinations of his rivals and narrowly avoided execution but was eventually reconciled with his king and able to die a peaceful death. Incredibly, this is the first full-length biography of this remarkable man.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1473877369/?tag=2022091-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0007IV8K6/?tag=2022091-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0995491011/?tag=2022091-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0405110057/?tag=2022091-20
Justiciar of England and Ireland
He traced his descent from Robert of Mortain, half brother of the Conqueror and first earl of Cornwall; he married about 1200 the daughter of William de Vernon, earl of Devon; and thus, from the beginning of his career, he stood within the circle of the great ruling families. He was born in 1170.
Already in 1201 he was chamberlain to King John, the sheriff of three shires, the constable of Dover and Windsor castles, the warden of the Cinque Ports and of the Welsh Marches.
He served with John in the continental wars which led up to the loss of Normandy.
It was to his keeping that the king first entrusted the captive Arthur of Brittany.
This office he retained after the death of John and the election of William, the earl marshal, as regent.
He held Dover successfully through the darkest hour of John's fortunes; he brought back Kent to the allegiance of Henry III. ; he completed the discomfiture of the French and their allies by the naval victory which he gained over Eustace the Monk, the noted privateer and admiral of Louis, in the Straits of Dover (Aug. 1217).
The inferiority of the English fleet has been much exaggerated, for the greater part of the French vessels were transports carrying reinforcements and
supplies.
But Hubert owed his success to the skill with which he manoeuvred for the weather-gage, and his victory was not less brilliant than momentous.
It compelled Louis to accept the treaty of Lambeth, under which he renounced his claims to the crown and evacuated England.
As the saviour of the national cause the justiciar naturally assumed after the death of William Marshal (1219) the leadership of the English loyalists.
He was opposed by the legate Pandulf (1218 - 1221), who claimed the guardianship of the kingdom for the Holy See; by the Poitevin Peter des Roches, bishop of Winchester, who was the young king's tutor; by the foreign mercenaries of John, among whom Falkes de Breaute took the lead; and by the feudal party under the earls of Chester and Albemarle.
On Pandulf's departure the pope was induced to promise that no other legate should be appointed in the lifetime of Archbishop Stephen Langton.
A plausible excuse was found in the next year for issuing a sentence of confiscation and banishment against Falkes de Breaute.
But the favour of Henry III was a precarious foundation on which to build.
The blow fell suddenly, a few weeks after his appointment as justiciar of Ireland.
On the outbreak of Richard Marshal's rebellion (1233), he was carried off by the rebels to the Marshal stronghold of Striguil, in the hope that his name would add popularity to their cause.
In 1234 he was admitted, along with the other supporters of the fallen Marshal, to the benefit of a full pardon.
His earldom died with him, though he left two sons.
The office, as having become too great for a subject, was now shorn of its most important powers and became politically insignificant.
Hubert entered John's service in the 1196. He played a decisive part in the war of 1215–17, first successfully resisting Prince Louis of France's long siege of Dover castle (1216–17), and then commanding the victorious English fleet at the August 1217 battle of Sandwich (or Dover) which finally ended Louis's hopes of becoming king of England.
(Hubert de Burgh rose from obscure beginnings to become on...)
De Burgh married thrice:
Firstly to Beatrice de Warrenne, daughter of William de Warrenne.
Secondly in September 1217 to Isabella, Countess of Gloucester, daughter and heiress of William Fitz Robert, 2nd Earl of Gloucester.
Thirdly to Princess Margaret, sister of King Alexander II of Scotland.
father
It was precipitated by one of those fits of passion to which the king was prone; but the influence of Hubert had been for some time waning before that of Peter des Roches and his nephew Peter des Rievaux.
