We cannot know what impact the loss of his mother may have had on the — Stephen Church

"The greatest problem that Henry faced was that, after a long minority, his subjects had become used to a king who did not rule."

"Henry might not be King Louis’s equal in matters of war, but he would be in matters of style (the confusion of style with substance is a recurring theme in Henry’s life)."

"We might like to think of Henry III as a gentle and pious king (an image he wanted us to see), but many of those who suffered under the rule of his local officials had a different perspective on their monarch."

"In thirteenth-century Europe, battles were rare, in part because they occurred only when both sides felt certain that they had the decisive advantage (it was relatively straightforward to avoid battle when necessary) and in part because the quickest way to win a battle was to kill or capture the opposition commander; unlike their modern counterparts, medieval war leaders led from the front and, as a result, were subject to more than their fair share of attention. A leader had to be certain of success if he were to engage the enemy in a battle."

"Most contemporaries would have argued that it was a king’s job to put in peril his soul for the good of his Church and of his people. But Henry was too self-obsessed to do that, too determined to live a life of a confessor saint and thereby join the mystical body of Christ in heaven and so be revered by the faithful in this world. In an age when the cult of royal saints was in the ascendancy, Henry’s ambition is understandable, but it was hardly justifiable and it was certainly not heroic."

"Henry’s major problem was that the local communities of England rather liked the idea that the ruler needed their consent if he were to rule legitimately. It was no longer enough that Henry was God’s anointed; the reforms that had followed in the wake of the Provisions of Oxford had created a widespread expectation that consent could and should be a political force in national politics. Simon and his baronial colleagues had not acted alone in their reforms, but had tapped into the grievances of the county communities of thirteenth-century England. Indeed, it was these local grievances that gave the reformers their political weight."