till the 15th of August ensuing or till the execution of the several
articles of the Great Charter. The better to insure the same end, he
allowed them to choose five-and-twenty members from their own body as
conservators of the public liberties; and no bounds were set to the
authority of these men either in extent or duration. If any complaint
were made of a violation of the charter, whether attempted by the
king, justiciaries, sheriffs, or foresters, any four of these barons
might admonish the king to redress the grievance; if satisfaction were
not obtained, they could assemble the whole council of twenty-five;
who, in conjunction with the great council, were empowered to compel
him to observe the charter, and, in case of resistance, might levy war
against him, attack his castles, and employ every kind of violence
except against his royal person and that of his queen and children.

All men throughout the kingdom were bound, under the penalty of
confiscation, to swear obedience to the twenty-five barons; and the
freeholders of each county were to choose twelve knights, who were to
make report of such evil customs as required redress, conformably to
the tenor of the Great Charter[56]. The names of those conservators
were: the Earls of Clare, Albemarle, Gloucester, Winchester, Hereford;
Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk; Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford; William
Mareschal, the younger; Robert Fitz-Walter, Gilbert de Clare, Eustace
de Vescey, Gilbert Delaval, William de Moubray, Geoffrey de Say, Roger
de Mombezon, William de Huntingfield; Robert de Ros, the Constable of
Chester; William de Aubenie, Richard de Perci, William Malet, John
Fitz-Robert, William de Lanvalay, Hugh de Bigod, and Roger de
Montfichet. These men were, by this convention, really invested with
the sovereignty of the kingdom; they were rendered coördinate with the
King, or rather superior to him, in the exercise of the executive
power; and as there was no circumstance of government which, either