recover Poitou, which had been gradually slipping out of his hands. At a Great Council held before he sailed, the barons, who had no sympathy with any attempt to recover lost possessions in France, not only rated him soundly for his folly, but, for the first time, absolutely refused to make him a grant of money. Simon told him to his face that the Frenchman was no lamb to be easily subdued. Simon's words proved true. Henry sailed for France, but in 1243 he surrendered all claims to Poitou, and returned discomfited. If he did not bring home victory he brought with him a new crowd of Poitevins, who were connected with his mother's second husband. All of them expected to receive advancement in England, and they seldom expected it in vain.

II. Papal Exactions. 1237-1243.-Disgusted as were the English landowners by the preference shown by the king to foreigners, the English clergy were no less disgusted by the exactions of the Pope. The claim of Innocent III. to regulate the proceedings of kings had been handed down to his successors and made them jealous of any ruler too powerful to be controlled. The Emperor Frederick II. had not only succeeded to the government of Germany, and to some influence over the north of Italy, but had inherited Naples and Sicily from his mother. The Pope thus found himself, as it were, between two fires. There was constant bickering between Frederick and Gregory IX., a fiery old man who became Pope in 1227, and in 1238 Gregory excommunicated Frederick, and called on all Europe to assist him against the man whom he stigmatised as the enemy of God and the Church. As the king of England was his vassal in consequence of John's surrender, he looked to him for aid more than to others, especially as England, enjoying internal peace more than other nations, was regarded as especially wealthy. In 1237, the year before Frederick's excommunication, Gregory sent Cardinal Otho as his legate to demand money from the English clergy. The clergy found a leader in Robert Grossetête, Bishop of Lincoln, a wise and practical reformer of clerical disorders; but though they grumbled, they could get no protection from the king, and were forced to pay. Otho left England in 1241, carrying immense sums of money with him, and the promise of the king to present three hundred Italian priests to English benefices before he presented a single Englishman. In 1243 Gregory IX. was succeeded by Innocent IV., who was even more grasping than his predecessor.

12. A Weak Parliamentary Opposition. 1244.-Against these evils the Great Council strove in vain to make head. It was now

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beginning to be known as Parliament, though no alteration was yet made in its composition. In 1244 clergy and barons joined in remonstrating with the king, and some of them even talked about restraining his power by the establishment of a Justiciar and Chancellor, together with four councillors, all six to be elected by the whole of the baronage. Without the consent of the Chancellor thus chosen no administrative act could be done. The scheme was a distinct advance upon that of the barons who, in 1215, forced the Great Charter upon John. The barons had then proposed to leave the appointment of executive officials to the king, and to appoint a committee of twenty-five, who were to have nothing to do with the government of the country, but were to compel the king by force to keep the promises which he had made. In 1244 they proposed to appoint the executive officials themselves. It was the beginning of a series of changes which ultimately led to that with which we are now familiar, the appointment of ministers responsible to Parliament. It was too great an innovation to be accepted at once, especially as it was demanded by the barons alone. The clergy, who were still afraid of the disorders which might ensue if power were lodged in the hands of the barons, refused to support it, and for a time it fell to the ground. At the same time Richard of Cornwall abandoned the baronial party. He had lately married the queen's sister, which may have drawn him over to the king; but it is also probable that his own position as the king's brother made him unwilling to consent to a scheme which would practically transfer the government from the king to the barons. On the other hand Earl Simon was found on the side of the barons. He held his earldom by inheritance from his English grandmother, and the barons were willing to forgive his descent from a foreign grandfather when they found him prepared to share their policy.

13. Growing Discontent. 1244-1254.-The clergy had to learn by bitter experience that it was only by a close alliance with the barons that they could preserve themselves from wrong. In 1244 a new envoy from the Pope, Master Martin, travelled over England wringing money from the clergy. Though he was driven out of the country in 1245, the Papal exactions did not cease. The Pope, moreover, continued to present his own nominees to English benefices, and in 1252 Grossetête complained that these nominees drew three times as much income from England as flowed into the royal exchequer. For a time even Henry made complaints, but in 1254 Innocent IV. won him over to his side. Frederick II. had died in 1250, and his illegitimate son, Manfred, a tried warrior and

an able ruler, had succeeded him as king of Sicily and Naples. Innocent could not bear that that crown should be worn by the son of the man whom he had hated bitterly, and offered it to Edmund, the second son of Henry III. Henry lept at the offer, hoping that England would bear the expense of the undertaking. England was, however, in no mood to comply. Henry had been squandering money for years. He had recently employed Earl Simon in Gascony, where Simon had put down the resistance of the nobles with a heavy hand. The Gascons complained to Henry, and Henry quarrelled with Simon more bitterly than before. In 1254 Henry crossed the sea to restore order in person. To meet his expenses he borrowed a vast sum of money, and this loan, which he expected England to meet, was the only result of the expedition.

A bed in the reign of Henry III.

14. The Knights of the Shire in Parliament. 1254.-During the king's absence the queen and Earl Richard, who were left as regents, and who had to collect money as best they might, gathered a Great Council, to which, for the first time, representative knights, four from each shire, were summoned. They were merely called on to report what amount of aid their constituents were willing to give, and the regents were doubtless little aware of the importance of the step which they were taking. It was only, to all appearances, an adaptation of the summons calling on the united jury to meet at St. Albans to assess the damages of the clergy in the reign of John. It might seem as if the regents had only summoned a united jury to give evidence of their constituents' readiness to grant certain sums of money. In reality the new scheme was sure to take root, because it held out a hope of getting rid of a constitutional difficulty which had hitherto proved insoluble -the difficulty, that is to say, of weakening the king's power to do evil without establishing baronial anarchy in its place. It was certain that the representatives of the free-holders in the counties would not use their influence for the destruction of order.

15. Fresh Exactions. 1254-1257.-At the end of 1254 Henry returned to England. In 1255 a new Pope, Alexander IV., confirmed

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his predecessor's grant of the kingdom of Sicily to Edmund, on condition that Henry should give a large sum of money for the expenses of a war against Manfred. To make it easy for Henry to find the money, Alexander gave him a tenth of the revenues of the English clergy, on the plea that the clergy had always borne their share of the expenses of a crusade, and that to fight for the Pope against Manfred was equivalent to a crusade. Immense sums were wrung from the clergy, who were powerless to resist Pope and king combined. Their indignation was the greater, not only because they knew that religion was not at stake in the Pope's effort to secure his political power in Italy, but also because the Papal

Barn of thirteenth-century date at Raunds, Northamptonshire.

court was known to be hopelessly corrupt, it being a matter of common talk that all things were for sale at Rome. The clergy indeed were less than ever in a condition to resist the king without support. Grossetête was dead, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, the queen's uncle, Boniface of Savoy, whose duty it was to maintain the rights of the Church, was a man who cared nothing for England except on account of the money he drew from it. Other bishoprics as well were held by foreigners. The result of the weakness of the clergy was that they were now ready to unite with the barons, whom they had deserted in 1244 (see p. 195). Henry's misgovernment, in fact, had roused all classes against him, as the townsmen and the smaller landowners had been even worse treated than the greater

barons. In 1257 one obstacle to reform was removed. Richard of Cornwall, the king's brother, who was formidable through his wealth and the numbers of his vassals, had for some time taken part against them. In 1257 he was chosen king of the Romans by the German electors, an election which would make him Emperor as soon as he had been crowned by the Pope. He at once left England to seek his fortunes in Germany, where he was well received as long as he had money to reward his followers, but was deserted as soon as his purse was empty.

16. The Provisions of Oxford. 1258. The crisis in England came in 1258, whilst Richard was still abroad. Though thousands were dying of starvation in consequence of a bad harvest, Henry demanded for the Pope the monstrous sum of one-third of the revenue of all England. Then the storm burst. At a Parliament at Westminster the barons appeared in arms and demanded, first, the expulsion of all foreigners, and, secondly, the appointment of a committee of twenty-four-twelve from the king's party and twelve from that of the barons-to reform the realm. The king unwillingly consented, and the committee was appointed. Later in the year Parliament met again at Oxford to receive the report of the new committee. The Mad Parliament, as it was afterwards called in derision, was resolved to make good its claims. The scheme of reinforcing Parliament by the election of knights of the shire had indeed been suffered to fall into disuse since its introduction in 1254, yet every tenant-in-chief had of old the right of attending, and though the lesser tenants-in-chief had hitherto seldom or never exercised that right, they now trooped in arms to Oxford to support the barons. To this unwonted gathering the committee produced a set of proposals which have gone by the name of the Provisions of Oxford. There was to be a council of fifteen, without the advice of which the king could do no act, and in this council the baronial party had a majority. The offices of state were filled in accordance with the wishes of the twenty-four, and the barons thus entered into possession of the authority which had hitherto been the king's. The danger of the king's tyranny was averted, but it remained to be seen whether a greater tyranny would not be erected in its stead. One clause of the Provisions of Oxford was not reassuring. The old Parliaments, which every tenant-in-chief had at least the customary right of attending, were no longer to exist. Their place was to be taken by a body of twelve, to be chosen by the barons, which was to meet three times a year to discuss public affairs with the council of fifteen.