Parliament was to meet three times a year—February, June and October. Four knights were to be chosen by the king’s lesser freehold tenant-knights in each county.
To save expense twelve commissioners were to be chosen to represent the baronage—“and the commonalty shall hold as established that which these twelve shall do.”[43] The fifteen counsellors consisted of six of the king’s party, and nine of the barons’—the most conspicuous of the latter were Simon of Montfort, Richard of Gloucester, and Bishop Cantilupe, of Worcester.
Then the oath was taken, “that neither for life nor death, for hatred or love, or for any cause whatever, would they be bent or weakened in their purpose to regain praiseworthy laws, and to cleanse the kingdom from foreigners.”
Henry and Prince Edward, his eldest son, took the oath willingly enough—though the latter soon began “to draw back from it so far as he could.” The king’s half-brothers and the rest of the aliens not only refused the oath, but swore that as long as they had breath they would never surrender their castles, revenues, or wardships.[44] Simon, who on the ground of his foreign birth had at once yielded his castles of Kenilworth and Odiham, without recompense, turned to William de Valence—who was blustering more than the rest—and said sharply, “To a certainty you shall either surrender your castles or lose your head.” The barons made it plain that they were in agreement with this, and then were the Poitevins afraid, not knowing what to do; “for if they hid themselves in their castles they would be starved out; for all the people would besiege them and utterly destroy their castles.” The aliens fled to the continent, and the new constitution was proclaimed in every county—in Latin, French, and English.[45]
Twenty years had passed since Henry had blessed Simon’s marriage with his sister Eleanor, and Simon had stood godfather to Prince Edward, and now after the Parliament at Oxford, meeting the Earl of Leicester in the Bishop of Durham’s palace on the Thames bank, the king cannot conceal his fear of the one man who held up the good cause—“like a pillar that cannot be moved.” The king had taken refuge from a thunderstorm, and to Simon’s assurance that the storm was passing, and was no longer to be feared, answered grimly, “I fear thunder and lightning a good deal, Lord Simon, but by the Head of God, I fear you more than all the thunder and lightning in the world.”
“Everyone suspected that these astounding words broke from the king because the Earl of Leicester manfully and boldly persevered in carrying out the provisions, compelling the king and all the enemies of these provisions to assent to them, and utterly banishing his brothers, who were corrupting the whole kingdom.” (Matthew Paris.)
Manfully as the great earl might strive, he could not accomplish the carrying out of the Provisions of Oxford. Henry was quickly at his old work, obtaining from Rome a dispensation from his old promises on the ground they had been obtained by compulsion, and bringing back his foreign supporters. The barons neither held together nor made any serious effort to promote good government.
Richard of Gloucester, jealous of Simon, fell away from the national cause before his death in 1262.[46]
Prince Edward stood by his oath, but did nothing to prevent the break-up of the provisional government, and soon openly supported his father.
In spite of all this the Provisions, modified at Westminster in 1259, endured for five years, and then it seemed as if nothing could save the country from civil war. As a last resource appeal was made by both sides to King Louis of France to arbitrate concerning the fulfilment of the Provisions, and at Amiens, in January, 1264, the award was given. Louis solemnly gave sentence for the king against the barons, entirely annulling the Statutes and Provisions of Oxford, and in particular declaring the king free to appoint his own ministers, councils, and sheriffs, and to employ aliens. But by the award—the mise—of Amiens the earlier charters given by the crown were to remain, and all disputes arising out of the Parliament of Oxford were to be suppressed. Louis gave as a reason for annulling the provisions that the pope had already annulled them.