in the art, the refinement, the devotion, and the absolutist principles
of foreigners, he seldom trusted a man of English birth. Too weak to
act for himself, too suspicious to trust his natural counsellors, he
found the friendship and advice for which he yearned in foreign
favourites and kinsmen. Thus it was that the hopes excited by the fall
of the Poitevins were disappointed. The alien invasion, checked for a
few years, was renewed in a more dangerous shape.

During the ten years after the collapse of Peter des Roches, swarms of
foreigners came to England, and spoiled the land with the king's entire
good-will. Henry's marriage brought many Provençals and Savoyards to
England. The renewed troubles between pope and emperor led to a renewal
of Roman interference in a more exacting form. The continued
intercourse with foreign states resulted in fresh opportunities of
alien influence. A new attempt on Poitou brought as its only result the
importation of the king's Poitevin kinsmen. The continued close
relationship between the English and the French baronage involved the
frequent claim of English estates and titles by men of alien birth.
Even such beneficial movements as the establishment of the mendicant
orders in England, and the cosmopolitan outlook of the increasingly
important academic class contributed to the spread of outlandish ideas.
As wave after wave of foreigners swept over England, Englishmen
involved them in a common condemnation. And all saw in the weakness of
the king the very source of their power.

The first great influx of foreigners followed directly from Henry's
marriage. For several years active negotiations had been going on to
secure him a suitable bride. There had also at various times been talk
of his selecting a wife from Brittany, Austria, Bohemia, or Scotland,
and in the spring of 1235 a serious negotiation for his marriage with