repay the sums which the Pope was borrowing for the purposes of his war. In
a Parliament at the opening of 1257 he demanded an aid and a tenth from the
clergy. A fresh demand was made in 1258. But the patience of the realm was
at last exhausted. Earl Simon had returned in 1253 from his government of
Gascony, and the fruit of his meditations during the four years of his
quiet stay at home, a quiet broken only by short embassies to France and
Scotland which showed there was as yet no open quarrel with Henry, was seen
in a league of the baronage and in their adoption of a new and startling
policy. The past half-century had shown both the strength and weakness of
the Charter: its strength as a rallying-point for the baronage and a
definite assertion of rights which the king could be made to acknowledge;
its weakness in providing no means for the enforcement of its own
stipulations. Henry had sworn again and again to observe the Charter and
his oath was no sooner taken than it was unscrupulously broken. The barons
had secured the freedom of the realm; the secret of their long patience
during the reign of Henry lay in the difficulty of securing its right
administration. It was this difficulty which Earl Simon was prepared to
solve when action was forced on him by the stir of the realm. A great
famine added to the sense of danger from Wales and from Scotland and to the
irritation at the new demands from both Henry and Rome with which the year
1258 opened. It was to arrange for a campaign against Wales that Henry
called a parliament in April. But the baronage appeared in arms with
Gloucester and Leicester at their head. The king was forced to consent to
the appointment of a committee of twenty-four to draw up terms for the
reform of the state. The Twenty-four again met the Parliament at Oxford in
June, and although half the committee consisted of royal ministers and
favourites it was impossible to resist the tide of popular feeling. Hugh
Bigod, one of the firmest adherents of the two Earls, was chosen as
Justiciar. The claim to elect this great officer was in fact the leading
point in the baronial policy. But further measures were needed to hold in