administrators, but wholly dependent on the royal will. He found equally
dependent agents of administration by surrounding himself with foreigners.
The return of Peter des Roches to the royal councils was the first sign of
the new system; and hosts of hungry Poitevins and Bretons were summoned
over to occupy the royal castles and fill the judicial and administrative
posts about the Court. The king's marriage in 1236 to Eleanor of Provence
was followed by the arrival in England of the new queen's uncles. The
"Savoy," as his house in the Strand was named, still recalls Peter of Savoy
who arrived five years later to take for a while the chief place at Henry's
council-board; another brother, Boniface, was consecrated on Archbishop
Edmund's death to the highest post in the realm save the Crown itself, the
Archbishoprick of Canterbury. The young Primate, like his brother, brought
with him foreign fashions strange enough to English folk. His armed
retainers pillaged the markets. His own archiepiscopal fist felled to the
ground the prior of St. Bartholomew-by-Smithfield who opposed his
visitation. London was roused by the outrage; on the king's refusal to do
justice a noisy crowd of citizens surrounded the Primate's house at Lambeth
with cries of vengeance, and the "handsome archbishop," as his followers
styled him, was glad to escape over sea. This brood of Provençals was
followed in 1243 by the arrival of the Poitevin relatives of John's queen,
Isabella of Angoulême. Aymer was made Bishop of Winchester; William of
Valence received at a later time the earldom of Pembroke. Even the king's
jester was a Poitevin. Hundreds of their dependants followed these great
nobles to find a fortune in the English realm. The Poitevin lords brought
in their train a bevy of ladies in search of husbands, and three English
earls who were in royal wardship were wedded by the king to foreigners. The
whole machinery of administration passed into the hands of men who were
ignorant and contemptuous of the principles of English government or
English law. Their rule was a mere anarchy; the very retainers of the royal
household turned robbers and pillaged foreign merchants in the precincts of