feeling animated Henry III; and for twenty-five wearisome years after
he had attained his majority he strove to govern England by means of
alien relatives and dependents.

The opposition offered by the great council was baronial rather than
national; the revolt in which it ended was a revolt of the half-breeds
rather than a revolt of the English; and the government they
established in 1258 was merely a legalized form of baronial anarchy.
But there was this difference between the anarchy of Stephen's reign
and that of Henry III's: now, when the foreigners fell out, the English
began to come by their own. A sort of "young England" party fell foul
of both the barons and the king; Simon de Montfort detached himself
from the baronial brethren with whom he had acted, and boldly placed
himself at the head of a movement for securing England for the English.
He summoned representatives from cities and boroughs to sit side by
side with greater and lesser barons in the great council of the realm,
which now became an English parliament; and for the first time since
the Norman Conquest men of the subject race were called up to
deliberate on national affairs. It does not matter whether this was the
stroke of a statesman's genius or the lucky improvisation of a party-
leader. Simon fell, but his work remained; Prince Edward, who copied
his tactics at Evesham, copied his politics in 1275 and afterwards at
Westminster; and under the first sovereign since the Norman Conquest
who bore an English name, the English people received their national
livery and the seisin of their inheritance.




CHAPTER III