Welcome to Gone Medieval from HistoryHit. To listen to all of our episodes,

add free and watch hundreds of history documentaries, download the HistoryHit app,

or go to historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. And if you're an Apple listener,

you can subscribe for new, add free episodes within the app.

Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval, I'm Matt Lewis. If you caught the previous episode we did

on Henry III, you'll know that David Carpenter promised to come back when the second volume of

his magisterial biography of this little known but incredible king was out. And treat to his word,

he's back. This book picks up in 1258 when Henry III is 51 years old, he's been king of England

for 42 years. He might have been looking forward to a quiet twilight to his reign,

but he was in for the rudest of awakenings. This volume is subtitled reform rebellion,

civil war and settlement, which in itself paints a picture. And delighted to welcome David back

to explore the remainder of Henry III's incredible reign. So thank you very much for coming back to

complete the story with us David. Well, thank you for asking me. So to start off with, could you just

sum up for us what Henry's position was in 1258? I've sort of said you know he's around 50, he's

been king for just over 40 years. What's the political situation he finds himself in at the outset of

this book? Well, he didn't realise it, but it was extremely precarious. And the reason for that

was that his open-handed gifts to his foreign relatives had set up tensions at court,

which he lacked the political ability to control and also had divided him from the increasing

Englishness of the political community. He'd also madly accepted papal offer of the throne of

Sicily for his second son, and that completely alienated him from the church. You had to pay vast

sums of money to the Pope for the privilege. And then also there was widespread discontent with

his rule in the localities. He'd failed to reform local government and that meant that his

...