Then for five years (1248–53) Simon was in Gascony contending with a body of nobles whom neither Henry II. nor Richard I. had been able to make good subjects, and whose only object in making formal acknowledgment of Henry III. was to escape the rule of Louis of France. Henry gave Simon neither men nor money, and lent a willing ear to all the complaints of Simon’s enemies in Gascony and in England.[40] At his own expense the Earl of Leicester saved Gascony for the English crown, and brought peace and law and trade to that province. Henry’s return was to make Simon answer trumped-up charges of robbery, cruelty and treason brought by Gascons in 1252. The charges were not proved, although Henry sent his own commissioner to Gascony to make enquiry. Earl Richard and other nobles who knew the country were convinced of Simon’s justice, and Simon, who was in England trying to raise supplies, turned sharply on the king, reminding him of unfulfilled promises. “Keep thy agreement with me,” he went on, “or pay me the money I have spent in thy service; for it is well known I have impoverished my earldom beyond recovery for the honour of the king.” “There is no shame in breaking my word to a traitor,” the king answered angrily. At this Simon in open wrath declared the king a liar, only saved by the shelter of royalty from the penalty of his speech. “Call thyself a Christian?” said the earl. “Dost thou ever confess thy sins?” “Yes,” said the king, “I do.” “Thy confession is useless without repentance and atonement.” said the earl. The king, more angry than ever, retorted, “I repent of one thing, and that is that I made thee an earl in England, to wax fat and kick against me. Get thee to Gascony, thou who lovest strife, and take thy fill there and meet thy father’s fate.” “I go willingly, my lord,” came the answer. “And, ungrateful as thou art, I will not return till I have made these rebels thy subjects and thy enemies thy footstool.”
Simon returned to Gascony, and though Henry again undermined his authority, he kept his word, only giving up his command when the work was done.
Adam of Marsh, a Franciscan friar, the friend and correspondent of Grosseteste, often writes to Simon in those days, encouraging and advising him. “Better is patience in a man than force,” says Adam, “and better he who rules his own passions than he who storms a city.” He prays this strong upright soldier-statesman to find comfort in the frequent reading of the Holy Scriptures, “breaking through as far as you can the cares and distractions of storm and trouble,” and recommends the 29th, 30th and 31st chapters of the book of Job, “together with the delightful commentaries of St. Gregory.”
Once more back in England, the time soon came when Simon was the recognised leader of the barons in their struggle with the king. And this leadership gave England its first representative parliament.
Henry was in greater financial difficulties than ever in 1257. The mad scheme of accepting the crown of Sicily for his second son Edmund from the pope, on condition that the cost of driving out Manfred, the Emperor Frederick’s son, undertaken by the pope, was to be paid for by England, had been adopted by Henry in spite of the opposition of bishops and nobles. Henry pledged his kingdom with the pope as security for the expenditure in Sicily,[41] and at last in the parliament of 1257 had to confess his indebtedness. Fourteen thousand marks were owing to Pope Alexander, and this wretched debt, in addition to the general contempt for law and justice by the king’s judges, sheriffs and foreign favourites, drove matters to a climax. The wet summer of 1257, followed by a failure at harvest, brought famine in the winter.
The barons insisted that the time had come for constitutional amendment. “The king’s mistakes call for special treatment,” said Richard, Earl of Gloucester, at a parliament early in 1258, and Simon, closely related to the royal house as he was, agreed. The swarm of royal parasites from Poitou raised objections to any interference with Henry’s prerogative, but were swept aside. “If the king can’t do without us in war he must listen to us in peace. And what sort of peace is this when the king is led astray by bad counsellors and the land is filled with foreign tyrants who grind down native-born Englishmen?” So the barons argued.[42]
To Henry’s threat, “I will send reapers and reap your fields for you,” Hugh Bigod of Norfolk had retorted briskly, “And I will send you back the heads of your reapers.”
Parliament met again in June that year at Oxford—the “Mad Parliament” it was called—and the barons came fully armed, for civil war seemed imminent. But the barons led by Richard of Gloucester and Earl Simon carried all before them and the war was postponed for five years.
The work of this parliament, well known as the Provisions of Oxford, was one more attempt to get the Great Charter honestly observed. Under this constitution:—
The king was to have a standing council of fifteen, by whose advice he was to act, and to whom the justiciar, chancellor and treasurer were to be accountable.