accepted Henry. Lewis found himself deserted, and was obliged to return to France.

2. Accession of Henry III.-Henry III. was but nine years old. It was the first time that a child had been king of England. If he had had an uncle

WILLIAM MARSHALL, EARL OF PEMBROKE.

or an older cousin he would probably never have ruled. As he had none, men preferred an English child as their king to a grown-up man who was French. The noble William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke, governed the kingdom during the short

F

remainder of his life. The Great Charter was ac cepted as the law of the land; but the part of it forbidding the king to tax those who held lands from him without their consent was left out.

3. Henry's Weakness of Character. When young

Henry became a man, he made a very bad king He was not cruel and violent like his father, but weak and contemptible. He made many promises but never kept them. He was fond of spending money, and he often spent it to no good purpose.

The best thing that he did was to rebuild Westminster Abbey, and to make it very much what it now is. Ever since the days of Henry II. the pointed arches had been used in churches and other buildings in the place of the round arches of the days of the Conqueror and his son. Henry's work in building the great abbey-church was well done, But he could never understand that he had any duty to perform to England. Like Edward the Confessor in many respects, he was like him in this, that he preferred foreigners to Englishmen. Two batches of foreigners were specially favoured by him. First came his mother's relations from Poitou, in the west of France, to the south of the Loire. Then came his wife's relations from Provence, a land on the shores of the Mediterranean, to the east of the Rhone. Whatever there was that Henry had to give away, castles, lands, lordships, and even bishoprics, went to these foreigners. Englishmen, both laymen. and clergymen, naturally grumbled at a system which gave all the good things to the foreigners, and left only the crumbs to be picked up by them.

4. Henry sends Money to the Fope.-Before long another mischief appeared. The popes, the successors of Innocent III., engaged themselves in wars in Italy. They gave out that they were fighting for the cause of Christianity itself. Henry believed all they said, and allowed them to send men to England to tax the English clergy. As they did not get enough in this way to satisfy them, he himself laid taxes upon both clergy and laity and sent the money to Rome.

5. Growing Influence of Parliament. To levy these taxes he was obliged to ask the consent of a body which was now beginning to be called Parliament. It had existed under different names, and with some difference in its composition, ever since the English had come into the island. At the beginning of this reign it very much resembled the present House of Lords without any House of Commons. There were in it barons who were landowners with large estates, and also the bishops and the principal abbots or heads of the monasteries. But though parliament was continually asked for money, and though for some time it granted what was asked, the dissatisfaction with a king who squandered English money on foreigners grew deeper every year.

6. Simon de Montfort.-At last the barons and clergy of England found a leader in a man who was, strangely enough, a foreigner by birth. Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, had married the king's sister. He was the first warrior of the day, a man great in capacity as in moral worth. Sir Simon the Righteous was the name by which he was popularly known. Under his guidance a parliament was held at Oxford in 1258, where the barons appeared in arms. By a series of agreements, known as the Provisions of Oxford, the government was taken out of the hands of the king, and placed in the hands of various councils. The arrangement did not last long. The barons had it all their own way in the councils, and the lesser landowners began to fear that they would not get justice from the great ones. Earl Simon

would have done justice if he could, but the barons were too strong for him. Their folly made them as unpopular as the king had been unpopular before, and Henry almost regained his old authority.

7. The Battle of Lewes and the Government of Earl Simon. For some time there was agitation and confusion, with no certain superiority on either side. The barons were divided between their jealousy of the king and their jealousy of Earl Simon. For all that, Earl Simon was growing in strength. Some years before, the freeholders, or men holding land of their own, whether it was much or little, had been allowed to choose men to go to parliament to speak in their name and to ask for the things which they wanted. These men are called the representatives of those who send them, and the representatives of the freeholders were like the country members of the present day. The towns, too, were increasing in commercial prosperity, and in the habit of managing their own affairs. The towns, and especially London, the greatest of them all, threw themselves on the side of the earl. In 1264, he gathered his followers together, came down upon the king at Lewes, in Sussex, and utterly defeated him. At the end of the day Henry had been made prisoner, and his eldest son Edward surrendered himself soon after. For rather more than a year Earl Simon ruled England. He summoned the towns to send representatives for the first time to parliament. He wished that people of every kind, the great landowners, the clergy, the small landowners, and the townsmen, should all be able to say for themselves in parliament what they wanted. As a