Out of the chaos, darkness and violence of the Middle Ages...
...one family rose to seize control of England.
(Yells)
Generation after generation, they ruled the country for more than 300 years...
...ruthlessly crushing all competition...
...to become the greatest English dynasty of all time...
...the Plantagenets.
(All cry out)
What I love about the Plantagenets' story
is that it's more shocking, more brutal,
and more astonishing
than anything you'll find in fiction.
I want to show you the Plantagenets as I see them -
real, living, breathing people,
driven by ambition, jealousy,
hatred and revenge.
These kings murdered, betrayed and tyrannised their way to spectacular success.
For better and for worse, the Plantagenets forged England as a nation.
This time...
...a friendship that turns to hatred...
...plunging England into civil war...
...and changing the monarchy for ever.
(Bird cawing)
Ripped By mstoll
(Man speaks Latin)
Henry III is the fourth Plantagenet king.
His grandfather Henry II ruled over more of France than the French king.
But thanks to the incompetence of Henry III's dad, King John,
most of those lands are gone.
Henry dreams of getting them back.
He's going to be a great Plantagenet king.
To be a king in the Middle Ages, you've got to be tough and politically savvy.
You need to fight wars and win - and the winning part's important.
You need to dispense justice fairly and evenly,
and above everything else, you need a boundless energy,
the appetite to get up in the morning and rule.
Unfortunately, for England, Henry III lacks pretty much every one of those qualities.
Henry's already had two goes at retaking his lost French lands.
But Henry messed it up big-time.
Both times it ended in expensive defeat.
The barons lost all confidence in the King.
Now they've turned off the money supply.
Which, of course, they can.
Henry's completely hamstrung by Magna Carta.
Today we think of it as a charter of human rights and the foundation of liberty.
But to Henry it's just a list of things he can't do.
And top of that list is that he can't raise any new taxes without the barons' say-so.
Winning back his Plantagenet empire is going to cost Henry a bomb.
But Magna Carta means the barons don't have to cough up.
They think Henry can talk the talk but he can't walk the walk.
And that's the truth about Henry. He's a total dreamer.
But give him his due.
He dreams big.
This is Westminster Abbey.
Henry builds it to restore some lost Plantagenet pride.
You can imagine Henry wandering through this incredible building thinking,
"Sends off all the right signals for a great king."
But as far as the barons are concerned, that's exactly what he's not.
And Henry just isn't strong enough to take them on alone.
But in autumn 1230,
a man turns up at court who changes the course of Henry's reign.
A minor French knight with big ambitions - Simon de Montfort.
De Montfort doesn't do anything by halves.
He wears a hair shirt under his clothes 24/7.
It rakes his skin, a perpetual reminder to stay focused on God.
- (Speaks French) - Simon de Montfort.
Basically, he's a fanatic.
And he backs his belief with action.
He's spent his youth chasing heretics around the south of France with a sword.
Henry sees a man with a muscular, no-nonsense, single-mindedness
that he needs to achieve his big dreams.
Henry was so young when he came to the throne
that he's grown up with other people making all the important decisions for him.
So when he meets Simon - charismatic, decisive -
he's looking at him and thinking, "I could use a man like that."
(Speaks French)
Henry's drawn to de Montfort like a moth to a flame.
But it's not just one-sided.
Because Simon may be pious but he's also very ambitious.
And he's come to England looking for the lucrative title of Earl of Leicester,
which he thinks belongs to his family.
So he's looking at Henry and thinking exactly the same thing.
"I could use a man like that."
Unsurprisingly, Henry and Simon quickly become best mates.
Simon's soon on the King's council, basically his right-hand man.
He's even steward at the King's wedding.
Simon de Montfort is on the way up.
Stored at the National Archives is an amazing document
that has survived for eight centuries.
It reveals just how ambitious Simon is.
This is the King's official copy of a charter made by Simon de Montfort in 1236.
The contents aren't really that important.
What is important is the way Simon's referred to himself.
It says here... "Simon de Montfort, Comes - that's Earl -
Earl of Leicester."
And that's interesting because Simon had lots of the lands that went with the title of Earl,
but he didn't have the title itself.
And that tells us quite a lot about Simon.
Firstly, it tells us he's ambitious.
Secondly, it tells us he rates his relationship with the King high enough
to go about using a title he doesn't really have the right to.
But, thirdly, he tells us he's right.
Because this is the King's official copy. Henry's given it his sign-off.
So Simon might be cocky, but it's with very good reason.
Henry can't get enough of Simon.
He propels his new best friend into the medieval stratosphere.
Simon marries Henry's sister Eleanor, the greatest catch in the kingdom.
Henry should have married her off to one of the great European rulers
to secure a political alliance.
But he's convinced Simon can help him become the great king of his dreams.
So he gives Eleanor to his best mate instead.
You can imagine Simon's feeling pretty pleased with himself.
He's married to the King's sister. He's an insider at court.
He's the King's favourite.
Considering where he came from, he hasn't done too badly.
But Simon's deal is not all it seems.
Eleanor should have come with a massive dowry.
Instead of giving it to his friend,
Henry hangs on to the money and land for himself.
This decision sows the seeds of catastrophe.
(Applause)
In 1239, Henry makes de Montfort Earl of Leicester.
Simon's now the King's brother-in-law, his chief advisor,
and an English baron.
But at precisely this moment of triumph,
Simon goes too far.
He takes out a big fat loan, using Henry as guarantor.
As far as he's concerned, Henry owes him for his wife's dowry.
So he doesn't ask Henry first.
Big mistake.
(They speak French)
When Simon tries to play it down...
(Speaks French)
...Henry threatens to throw Simon and his own sister into the Tower of London.
And he's not kidding.
For Henry, this is an outrageous liberty.
Giving things to Simon, that's one thing.
But he can't just stand around while Simon takes what he wants.
Henry doesn't like it but Simon has to go.
Simon and Eleanor are forced to flee to France.
It seems like the end of a beautiful friendship.
But Henry's going to need Simon again sooner than he thinks.
Just three years later, the King gets himself into big trouble.
Henry's launched an attack here at Poitou in Western France.
It was once his ancestors' territory.
Henry thought he could take it back. But he couldn't.
Just like last time, the barons used Magna Carta to deny him the taxes he needed.
But, just like last time, Henry went ahead anyway.
Attacking Poitou was spectacularly stupid...
...because the Count of Poitou's brother is the French king.
Henry's forces quickly find themselves chased down by the whole French army.
In desperation, Henry has called on the one man he believes can help him -
his estranged and banished best friend, Simon de Montfort.
Simon was just back from a year on crusade in the Holy Land,
so his military expertise was greater than ever.
And Henry had eaten humble pie to get him back.
Now this is quite a climb-down.
Henry was the one who banished Simon in the first place
and now he's stuffed without him.
But even Simon can't salvage this disaster.
Henry flees the field.
He leaves Simon fighting a desperate rear-guard action with the King's men.
They retreat towards the town of Saintes.
Henry is cowering inside the town,
and it's not just the French army that comes storming after him.
(Speaks French)
Simon is not used to losing.
Now it's his turn to explode at the King.
(Speaks French)
The King himself reported what Simon says.
Charles the Simple was a notoriously useless French king,
whose subjects put him in jail because he was such a bad general.
Thinking about locking up your king is one thing,
but actually saying it to his face is flirting with treason.
But Henry can't call Simon on it.
This is the King's third failure in France.
There's now zero chance the English barons will support his ambitions.
He desperately needs an ally in the aristocracy.
And Simon is still the Earl of Leicester.
So when they return to England, Henry eats more humble pie.
He gives Simon this whacking great castle at Kenilworth.
For five years, their friendship holds up.
So when a foreign crisis pops up in 1247, the King turns to his best friend again.
All Henry has left of the Plantagenet empire in France is Gascony.
But it's in chaos, with feuding nobles, a French king itching to invade,
and its southern borders under attack.
As ever, the barons won't let Henry raise taxes to sort it out.
They think he'll just cock it up again.
So Henry asks Simon to fix it for him.
And he'll pay him later.
Henry admires the fact that Simon will take the tough decisions he can't.
That's why he sends him.
Simon's a zero-tolerance sort of guy.
And, true to form, he launches a vicious crackdown on the Gascon rebels,
even cutting their vines, which in wine country is a terrible punishment.
But while Simon's in Gascony,
Henry finds himself drawn in by another powerful figure.
William de Valence, the King's half-brother,
leader of a French family, called the Lusignans.
Henry starts giving them land and titles.
In exchange, they supplant the English lords
and begin to take control of the government for him.
Finally, the King has some allies at home.
Seems great, doesn't it? But it's not.
The Lusignans were actually booted out of France
because they're dangerous, ruthless and pretty nasty.
Henry's decision to give them so much power will tear the country apart.
But right now all he can see is that they make him feel like a powerful king.
Now he doesn't need Simon de Montfort like he used to.
When the Gascons complain about Simon's brutality...
...Henry hangs his old mate out to dry.
Even though de Montfort has run up huge debts doing the King's dirty work...
...Henry puts him on trial for his treatment of the Gascons.
The trial takes place here,
right in the shadow of Henry's greatest building project, Westminster Abbey.
And it's held in what used to be the monks' dining room.
You can still see part of the original wall.
If you'd been sitting on the other side of that in 1252,
you'd have witnessed the end of the friendship of Simon de Montfort and Henry III.
The case is held before the King and Simon's fellow barons.
Simon is reeling that his friend has put him on trial.
An all-out row kicks off between them.
Sounds like Simon's having a dig at Henry's piety,
but I think there's more to it than that.
He's certainly picked an analogy designed to hurt the King's feelings.
But what he's really saying is,
"What's the point in confessing, admitting your mistakes,
if you're gonna do the same stupid things again afterwards?"
It's like, "You're useless. You know you're useless.
But you don't want to do anything about it."
And that sounds like Simon's really over-stepping the mark again.
But he's about to give Henry a brutal lesson in kingship.
(Speaks French)
Simon has taken the political temperature in the room.
The King hasn't.
(Speaks French)
When Henry puts the charges to a vote...
...Simon walks.
The other barons are as fed up with the King and his Lusignans as Simon is.
Henry and Simon now hate each other with a passion.
And England will pay a terrible price.
(Shouting and screaming)
Henry sulks.
And he lets the Lusignans off the leash.
(Woman screams)
They start grabbing land and property in total violation of Magna Carta.
Their supporters even ransack the Archbishop of Canterbury's London palace.
Henry simply stands by and lets them get away with it.
It just confirms the barons' view that he's a spineless excuse for a king.
And then, in 1256, Henry does something quite extraordinary.
It's spelt out in an astonishing 700-year-old book
here in the British library.
This is the chronicle of Matthew Paris,
who's writing at the time of Henry III
and had better access than anyone else to Henry and his court.
And he writes that the King gave an order under the regio sigillo, the Royal seal,
that no brief-that's any official Government document -
could be used to cause injury, alicui fratri suo,
to any of his brothers.
Which includes the Lusignans.
So Henry's saying the Lusignans can't be prosecuted.
Effectively they're above the law.
This is political dynamite.
The barons are furious.
In retaliation, they squeeze Henry's finances further.
Henry's not in a very good place.
He's lost the war with France, he's made a mess of Gascony,
he's upset most of his barons, and he's broke.
It's time to sort things out. So what does he do?
Does he kick out the Lusignans?
Does he reassure his barons?
Does he sort out Gascony?
No. He decides to do something bold, something radical.
Something no-one will expect.
He decides to invade Sicily.
It was actually the Pope's idea. He asked Henry to do it.
But Henry jumps at the opportunity to take control of a wealthy country.
This could help free him from the control of the English barons.
But Sicily is a thousand miles away.
It would cost an absolute fortune to take.
Henry can't even hang on to his lands in France...
so invading Sicily is a bonkers idea.
And everyone can see it...except the King.
Henry demands taxes from the English barons to fund the invasion.
He thinks he can get away with it because de Valence's violent Lusignans support him.
A group of barons come to London to put Henry back in his box.
And it's his old friend Simon de Montfort leading the charge.
(Speaks French)
Simon de Montfort comes to London to bring King Henry III to heel.
The King stitched him up over Gascony. Simon will never forgive him.
This is Westminster Hall, more than 900 years old.
It's all that's left of the medieval palace
and it's here that Simon and the barons march up to meet Henry III.
He's sitting up there on his throne,
and he thinks they've come to give him money for his Sicilian invasion.
But as soon as they arrive, he realises something's very wrong.
Simon and the others might not have swords in their hands,
but they're still done up in their battle armour.
And Henry knows the tables are turned.
Simon and his allies aren't here to take Henry captive.
What they're demanding is almost worse.
First, they want the Lusignans stripped of all their English property
and kicked out of the country.
Second, they want a permanent council of barons to manage the affairs of the King.
(Speaks French)
However they want to phrase it,
the reality is they're taking over.
This is a nightmare for Henry.
Simon and his mates are saying, "Not only are we not going to help you with Sicily,
but you're such a disaster we're going to take away pretty much all your power."
They come armed because they're telling Henry, "We're stronger than you." And they are.
Henry's forced to agree to all their demands, just to get out of the room.
(Speaks French)
But as soon as he does, he backtracks on everything he's promised.
Eight weeks later, at a parliament in Oxford, Henry faces off against Simon and the barons.
And he takes his half-brother William, and his Lusignan thugs, with him.
The town's full of knights from both sides, armed to the teeth.
The atmosphere's electric. You can feel the tension.
The country's teetering on the verge of civil war.
The hated Lusignans have no intention of giving up their castles and land.
They think they can take on Simon de Montfort.
The explosive meeting becomes known as the Mad Parliament.
Simon directly threatens the King's half-brother.
"Make no mistake. You will either give up your castles or you will lose your head."
Is he bluffing? Or is Simon serious?
Frankly, I wouldn't put it past him.
This isn't some soft, wealthy English baron.
This is a hard man, a crusader.
A guy who's used to spilling blood.
The Lusignans are no match for de Montfort and they know it.
They flee for their lives.
Henry's resistance collapses.
He has to accept all the barons' demands.
The new rules that he's forced to sign up to
are legally recorded in a document called the Provisions of Oxford.
This is one of the most important documents in British history.
Everyone thinks of Magna Carta as the great bill that limited kings' power.
But the Provisions of Oxford are actually far more extreme.
Henry spent his whole life railing against the restrictions of Magna Carta.
The Provisions of Oxford really give him something to complain about.
We have them here, copied in French into a chronicle from the time.
And you can see a council of quinze - that's 15 - barons
will meet to manage the affairs of the Kingdom.
A parliament will meet tres - three - times a year,
whether or not the King's summoned it.
Simon and the barons - essentially a parliament -
can now make decisions on pretty much anything that happens in the kingdom...
...whether or not Henry likes it.
He's become a rubber stamp.
And if he breaks the provisions, the penalty is war.
It's a seismic shift in political power away from the King.
And it's the basis of our modern parliamentary system.
This must be devastating for Henry.
He's already lost most of his ancestral lands in France.
And now in England, where his authority is supposed to be supreme,
he's virtually powerless as well.
His whole vision of what it is to be a king is being shattered.
The barons demand that everyone swears an oath before God
to abide by the provisions.
Problem is, Henry and Simon's attitudes to the oath are poles apart.
Everyone knows Plantagenet kings and their barons
have a long history of breaking their oaths.
But for Simon, once he's made a sacred oath with God,
he's really boxed himself into a corner.
Remember, this guy is a religious zealot.
The oath is sworn at Blackfriars Church in Oxford
by Henry, the barons...and by Simon.
So after he makes the oath, he stays up half the night in prayer.
He abstains from sex and he's still wearing his hair shirt under his clothes.
This is his treaty with God.
And he's never going to break it.
But he knows Henry will.
Within four years, de Montfort's worst fears come true...
...because Henry has sworn the oath knowing he'll break it.
He brings back the Lusignans,
and just like before they do pretty much whatever they want.
Henry's gambling the barons will turn a blind eye
because the alternative is civil war.
And no-one wants that.
Do they?
It's a massive miscalculation by the King.
One man is committed.
Almost alone amongst those who've sworn it,
Simon will keep the oath, whatever the cost.
Simon raises an army from those barons who still believe in the Provisions of Oxford.
In 1264, England is plunged into a civil war.
This is the town of Lewes, close to the south coast.
And it's here that Simon de Montfort and Henry III
face off against each other in battle for the first time.
Simon may have the law on his side,
but however you dress it up,
he's still taking on God's anointed king.
He is now a traitor.
And when it comes to traitors, Henry can still call on plenty of support.
By the time they confront each other, Simon's on the back foot.
Simon's experienced enough to know that as he approaches the town of Lewes,
here on the Sussex Downs, things don't look very good for him.
He's injured with a broken leg, his army is massively outnumbered, two to one,
and Henry is holed up down there behind strong town walls.
Simon knows the King will be feeling pretty confident.
Then again, that's what he's banking on.
He's planning to force the King into a winner-takes-all battle on his terms...
by drawing the King out into the open.
It's a massive gamble. But that's Simon all over.
Under cover of darkness,
Simon's army takes this ridge overlooking the town.
Now he has the high ground.
(Speaks Latin)
Early next morning, Simon's army prostrate themselves on the ground
to be blessed by the Bishops.
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti...
Simon and his men are on a crusade for liberty.
He and his men truly believe that God is on their side.
They're radicalised, driven by the dream of a different kind of England,
in which the King no longer calls the shots.
Henry is fighting for the absolute supremacy of the King.
Simon de Montfort is fighting to crush it.
De Montfort may have God on his side,
but the King has got far more men.
He also has a secret weapon.
Edward, his eldest son and heir.
He's utterly fearless and champing at the bit
to hack up de Montfort and his mates.
Henry finally sees a chance to win his great Plantagenet victory.
How can he lose?
Just as Simon hoped, the King comes out fighting.
The battle's a complete disaster for the King.
Henry's still a terrible general.
His son Edward goes charging off over the hill after a rabble of civilians.
His brother Richard gets himself besieged in a windmill.
And Henry ends up forced back here to the Priory of St Pancras,
just outside the town walls.
Simon dares and he wins.
The King and his son Edward are captured.
The King's sword is surrendered to Simon.
Not exactly the Plantagenet glory Henry was aiming for.
(Cheering)
Simon de Montfort, once a minor French nobleman,
now holds ultimate power in England.
This is a revolution.
Simon's taken an army to the field to seize the power of an anointed king.
It's treason and it's also an unforgivable betrayal of friendship.
The King's dreams of glory have been crushed.
But there is still one Plantagenet who could save the dynasty.
And it's not Henry.
(Yelling)
(Cheering)
In the aftermath of Lewes, Henry's in a desperate state.
He's been humiliated in battle again.
His nemesis Simon de Montfort is running the country
and to top it all off Henry's Simon's prisoner.
The King's dreams of Plantagenet glory
have been comprehensively trashed.
For more than a year, Simon de Montfort dominates the government of England
from his castle at Kenilworth.
Henry's still king in theory. In reality, he's just Simon's puppet.
To maintain his hold on the country, Simon keeps the King with him.
Everything in the Government is decided under the direction of de Montfort.
For the first time in the history of England,
a political movement has succeeded in crushing a tyrannical king.
Sounds very noble, doesn't it?
But the reality is that this is at least as much about greed as liberty.
Simon may have set himself up as a man selflessly doing what's right for England,
but actually there's a lot more going on.
Even though he has this vast castle at Kenilworth,
Simon's been brooding that the King short-changed him on money and land.
And now he has Henry just rubber-stamping his decisions,
it's an opportunity too good to miss.
Simon decides to take what he believes he's owed.
De Montfort takes money and land for himself and his family.
And by keeping the King close to him,
Simon thinks he's got everything under control.
It's a fatal error of judgment.
It's not Henry who threatens Simon's hold on England.
The man he should be watching is the 25-year-old heir to the throne, Edward.
But Simon's taken his eye off the ball and left the Prince in Hereford under house arrest.
With things going so well, Simon's relaxed the guard on Prince Edward.
He even allows him out riding.
So Edward plays a game with his captors...
...swapping horses to find the fastest.
(Neighing)
They think it's all great fun... until he finds the fastest horse.
(He laughs)
Prince Edward finds plenty of nobles increasingly nervous
that Simon will snatch the crown.
And that scares the barons more than Henry's abysmal reputation.
Edward promises to let them keep the reforms,
and that persuades many of them to defect back to the Plantagenet cause.
The Plantagenet army is back on the march.
The end game in the 25-year grudge match between the former best friends,
Henry III and Simon de Montfort,
takes place here in Worcestershire.
Simon's got the King with him for insurance.
He's trying to get back to Kenilworth to gather reinforcements.
But Edward is moving too fast.
At the beginning of August, he catches up with Simon here at Evesham.
From the top of the old abbey tower,
Simon sees the Plantagenet army approaching in the distance.
He's pinned down and outnumbered.
De Montfort realises that if Edward's men free Henry, the game is up.
So Simon disguises the King in one of his own uniforms.
If he goes down, he's taking Henry with him.
He doesn't wait for the Plantagenets to come for him.
Simon attacks first.
This is Simon the crusader.
Last time the odds were stacked against him, he dared and won.
So this time he dares again.
He can't help it. It's what he's good at.
Simon's army charges out in a single wedge,
hoping to punch through enemy ranks.
They race up through the centre of Evesham,
to the fields overlooking the town where the Plantagenet soldiers are lined up.
Simon gambles that because he's got the King with him,
the Plantagenet army will be too cautious to attack.
But Simon's as wrong as you get.
This time, the armies rally behind the King's son Edward,
and they're out for bloody revenge.
The two armies meet here in the fields outside Evesham.
As the Plantagenet army piles in,
the battle descends into an orgy of violence.
The royalists cut down 4,000 of the rebels.
The battlefield and streets of Evesham are piled high with their corpses.
More than 30 of Simon's knights are slaughtered.
But there is only one way to end the rebellion for good.
Edward sends a 12-knight hit squad onto the battlefield with one mission...
...find and kill Simon de Montfort.
King Henry, still dressed as one of de Montfort's men,
is almost taken out by his own hit squad.
Simon, already badly wounded by a lance...
...is not so lucky.
Simon's killed somewhere on these fields outside Evesham.
And some of the chroniclers go so far as to call it murder.
This might be a battlefield,
but 12 knights ganging up against one is hardly playing by the rules.
But, even then, just killing Simon isn't enough for Henry's men.
This is an upstart, an outsider,
someone who's taken on a king and undermined what being a king means.
Simon de Montfort, traitor to the crown,
once the most powerful man in England, dies.
The message to everyone must be crystal clear.
No-one defies the King and lives.
The body of the King's once-best-friend is butchered.
His testicles are cut off and then rammed into his mouth...
...before his head is cut from his body and paraded on a spear.
Henry finally has his moment of Plantagenet glory.
But, in truth, it's his son Edward who delivers it.
Henry is just a bystander.
But the price of victory over Simon
is accepting the reforms that Simon was fighting for.
Because that's the deal Edward sealed to raise an army.
Henry's won the battle, but he's lost the war.
The King's dream of absolute power has died with Simon.
Dismal as Henry's reign was,
he still left behind him two of the greatest legacies of the whole Plantagenet dynasty.
And they're both right here.
Westminster Abbey - Henry's extraordinary palace to God -
and over there, Parliament -
seat of the democracy that still governs our country today.
It was borne not out of wisdom and smart politics,
but out of the passion and fury of a brutal, bloody feud between two best friends.
Next time...Edward II.
His short-sighted obsessions plunged England into a nightmare of political violence,
bloodlust and, most of all, revenge.
(Screams)
Ripped By mstoll