The Minority of Henry III
'Woe unto the land whose king is a child'; but despite a foreign claimant and rebellious barons, a nine-year-old monarch was steered successfully to adulthood in twelfth-century England by loyal guardians. David Carpenter tells how it was done and its impact on future constitutional developments in the Middle Ages.
When King John died in October 1216, Henry, his eldest son, was only nine years old. It was not until January 1227 that he assumed full regal powers. Thus England experienced its first royal minority since the Norman Conquest. The early part of Henry III's minority was a period of acute political crisis. The throne itself had to be secured through war, for John had died with half his kingdom controlled by Louis, the eldest son of the King of France, to whom the rebellious barons had offered the Crown. Although the war was won within a year, the young king's governors then faced the almost total collapse of royal power. The king was penniless and his personal authority in abeyance until he came of age. In 1219, as Pandulf, the papal legate reported in alarm, he was 'called by way of derision not a king but a boy.'
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