foreign author, there is much probability in them. The attitude in which Simon de Montfort is represented is just that which he is likely to have taken ; the traits of the other characters accord with what we know of them. The expedition undertaken so lightly ended in a miserable failure. The Count of la Marche proved a broken reed. Deserted by him, the English suffered a severe defeat at the battle of Saintes, and the Earls of Leicester, Salisbury, and Norfolk, with a few other great barons, were hardly able to save the army from destruction, and the country from the penalty of a royal ransom. This doubtless increased the favour in which Simon already stood at this time with the king,' and which the Count of Toulouse and the King of Aragon, hereditary foes of the house of Montfort, tried in vain to undermine.2 Henry bestowed upon him several marks of friendship; 3 he held a most important position in the royal council; and when the other nobles left for England, disgusted at the illsuccess of the campaign, and at the idle frivolities in which Henry wasted time and money at Bordeaux, he and William of Salisbury, though much to their own loss, remained. Simon had a year to examine the restless party-spirit, the faithlessness, the hatred of authority, which characterised those who had been. 1 Lettres de Rois, 58, where Henry uses his royal privilege of taking possession of all prisoners in Simons favour: the letter is dated 3 July; battle of Saintes fought 22 July. Matt. Par. 590, 596. Gifts mentioned by Pauli, Simon de Mont., 46. A year later Kenilworth was finally conferred on the earl and countess; the king became surety to Eleanor for 400/. a year, owed to her from her Irish estates; Simon was made guardian of Leicester Castle, and had certain wardships made over to him.-Greens Princesses, 82, 85. CHAP. II. 1243 A truce with France. once his fathers foes, and were now in nothing but name the subjects of the King of England. Henry at length concluded a disgraceful truce with France, in which he resigned all claim on Poitou, the original motive of the war. This was in September 1243. He returned to England with even less honour and in greater difficulties than thirteen years before; while Simon de Montfort had in the interval made good his position in the country he had adopted as his own. 59 CHAPTER III. PARLIAMENTARY HISTORY, 1232-49. CHAP III. 1232 Introduc aliens. The go vernment WE left the king at the point when he had just dismissed his old and faithful servant, the Earl of Kent. In spite of the unpopularity of the justiciar, it was an evil day for the country when he fell. It was tion of better to be fined by Hubert de Burgh, than to be robbed by Peter des Roches. The bishop was now completely master of the situation. He soon introduced numbers of Poitevins, his fellow-countrymen, and others into England: many were placed in positions of authority, others served him as armed dependents. The expedition of 1230 had produced a financial crisis. The clergy had already refused the taxes demanded. In the council of March 1232 the lay magnates declared they were already half-ruined by the expenses of personal service in the war, and were neither able nor in duty bound to give further aid. The clergy evaded the question with the plea that they could not vote in the absence of many of their members. So soon then had men come round again to the position taken up by the framers of Magna Carta. Here were both the great principles Principles therein stated, the necessity for completeness in the composition of the council, and the right of assent to in diffi culties. of the opposition. CHAP. 1232-34 to Peter des Roches. an extraordinary tax, again clearly put forward; here were the clergy and the laity again simultaneously, though not yet jointly, opposing unlawful claims. Opposition Peter des Roches had already made the king believe that it was his own fauit if he could get no money from his subjects. Henry now procured from the Pope a dispensation from the oath to Magna Carta, on the ground that he had sworn in youthful ignorance to things injurious to the welfare of his realm and to his royal prerogative. The temper of the country was growing dangerous. The barons refused to appear at Oxford, and backed their refusal with the threat that, if Henry did not dismiss the bishop, they would look to choosing another king. When at length, after a third summons, they made their appearance, it was in arms. The Earl of Pembroke, against whom the chief efforts of Peter des Roches were directed, and several other great barons, were outlawed, and their properties confiscated and given to the Poitevins. Robert Bacon, a Dominican, and a clerk in the Curia, when preaching before the king, told him to his face that he would have no peace till the bishop and his satellites were gone. It was no opportune time for a foreigner like Simon de Montfort to be claiming his rights, and during all this period he was probably, as we have seen, absent from England. Danger of civil war. The declaration of Peter des Roches, when the bishops tried to protect the outlaws, that there were no peers in England as in France, and that the king could punish rebels as he pleased, seems to have brought matters to a crisis. Collisions between the Letters of Gregory IX, 1233 and 1234, quoted by Pauli, Gesch. von Eng. iii. 594. CHAP. III. Earl Marshall and the kings troops followed in the winter; the Welsh, at the earls instigation, entered Wiltshire, and freed Hubert de Burgh from captivity. 1232-34 The Pope himself' wrote to ask mercy for the man who had worked with his legates to preserve England from a complete rupture with the holy see. At last, in the Parliament of February 1234, Archbishop Edmund, who had just been appointed by the Pope, took the lead of the opposition. In full council he reminded the king of the evil done by this same Peter des Roches in the days of his father John, and deIclared that he and his had incurred the ban for their violation of the law of the land. The king yielded to the voice of the Church. Peter des Roches was dis- Dismissal missed. Hubert de Burgh was restored to favour, but not des to office; the other outlaws were pardoned. Stephen Roches. de Segrave, one of the most odious of the kings instruments, was also degraded from his office of justiciar; and this important post seems to have remained unfilled, or reduced to political insignificance, till the appointment of Hugh Bigod by the barons in the Mad Parliament.2 Thus the first important constitutional victory of 1 Fad. i. 211. 2 See Foss, Fudges ii. 136, 151, ed. 1848. It has been implied, from a passage in Matt. Paris, p. 495, that Simon de Pateshulle held the office of Chief Justiciar in 1233, and his son Hugh in 1234; but this rests on a misinterpretation of the words. The latter was only one of the justiciars at this time, and was appointed, not to the office of Chief Justiciar, but to that of Treasurer. Foss is of opinion that the former office remained vacant from 1234 to 1258. He also believes the office of Chancellor to have been vacant from 1244 to 1261, though several persons are mentioned in the interval as Custodes Sigilli, a new title first used in 1255, whose holders seem to have taken the place of the Chancellor. Stubbs, Const. Hist. ii. 275, says, 'There (sc. in the exchequer) the treasurer stepped into the place of the justiciar, and became from the middle of the reign of Henry III one of the chief officers of the Crown,' of Peter |