But after the separation of the Parliament, the barons, under the pretext that they had yet abuses to reform and laws to administer, refused to resign their power; and not content with retaining it illegally, they employed it to their own advantage. Their acts and laws had no other object than their own personal interest. Without knowing it, they were acting ruinously to themselves, for they detached from their party that part of the population which clearly apprehended their designs. Two laws especially alienated the minds of the people from them; one of these laws took away from the sheriffs the right to fine those barons who should refuse to present themselves at the county courts, or at the assizes held by the judges in circuit. The second decided that the judges' circuits should only take place every seven years.
These measures opened the eyes of the people, and they speedily abandoned the authors of them. One fact may prove how far their tyranny had been already exercised at the expense of the country. A deputation was sent to Prince Edward in the name of the English bachelors (communitatis bachelariæ Angliæ), praying him to compel the barons to finish their work and fulfil their promises, as the king had fulfilled his. The prince replied that he had sworn fidelity to the Acts of Oxford, and that he was resolved to keep his oath. Nevertheless, he demanded of the barons, that they should resign their power, threatening if they refused, to compel them to do so, and to take into his hands the interests of the community.
What was this communitatis bachelariæ Angliæ? There is reason to believe that by this name, the body of knights of shires represented themselves. We see by this that the great barons had alienated from themselves this class of men, and that the king had begun to attach them to his party.
From these facts we see that besides the two great powers anciently established,—the nobility arid royalty,—a third power had been formed at this period, which alternately inclined to one or other of these rival powers, and which already exercised a strong influence, since it ensured victory to the party in whose favour it might pronounce.
Lecture XII.
Struggle between Henry III. and his Parliament.
Arbitration of Saint Louis.
The Earl of Leicester heads the great barons in their struggle with the king.
He is defeated and killed at Evesham (1265).
Admission of deputies from towns and boroughs into Parliament (1264).
Royalist reaction.
Leicester's memory remains popular.
Henry III. And His Parliament.
We have seen how, in the midst of the struggles between royalty and the feudal aristocracy, an intermediate class arose,—a new but already imposing power,—and how the two contending powers each felt the necessity of securing an alliance with this third power; we have now to follow, by the examination of authentic documents, that is to say, of the writs and laws of the period, the progress of this new class, which we shall find taking an increasingly active part in the government of the country.
We have seen how the twenty-four barons, who were commissioned to reform the constitution of the kingdom, abusing the power which they thus held in trust, had refused, in spite of the king and the country, to resign their dictatorship. This refusal soon excited violent dissensions between them and the king, and civil war was on the point of being again enkindled. In 1261, Henry sent writs to several sheriffs, enjoining them to send to him, at Windsor, the three knights of each shire who had been summoned to St. Albans by the Earl of Leicester and his party. These writs plainly show that the king and the barons endeavoured more than ever to conciliate the body of knights, and that the king had then succeeded in attaching them to his party.