refusal.  If the barons at last relented, it was always on conditions most painful to his feelings.  They obliged him to acknowledge his former misconduct, to confirm anew the two charters, and to promise the immediate dismissal of the foreigners.[60] But Henry looked only to the present moment:  no sooner were his coffers replenished than he forgot his promises and laughed at their credulity.  Distress again forced him to solicit relief, and to offer the same conditions.  Unwilling to be duped a second time, the barons required his oath.  He swore, and then violated his oath with as much indifference as he had violated his promise.  His next applications were treated with scorn; but he softened their opposition by offering to submit to excommunication if he should fail to observe his engagements.  In the great hall of Westminster the King, barons, and prelates assembled; the sentence was pronounced by the bishops with the usual solemnity; and Henry, placing his hand on his breast, added, “So help me God, I will observe these charters, as I am a Christian, a knight, and a king crowned and anointed.”  The aid was granted, and the King reverted to his former habits.

It was not, however, that he was by inclination a vicious man.  He had received strong religious impressions; though fond of parade, he cautiously avoided every scandalous excess; and his charity to the poor and attention to the public worship were deservedly admired.  But his judgment was weak.  He had never emancipated his mind from the tutelage in which it had been held in his youth, and easily suffered himself to be persuaded by his favorites that his promises were not to be kept, because they had been compulsory and extorted from him in opposition to the just claims of his crown.

On the fall of Hubert de Burgh the King had given his confidence to his former tutor, Peter the Poitevin, Bishop of Winchester.  That the removal of the minister would be followed by the dismissal of the other officers of government, and that the favorite would employ the opportunity to raise and enrich his relatives and friends, is not improbable; but it is difficult to believe, on the unsupported assertion of a censorious chronicler, that Peter could be such an enemy to his own interest as to prevail on the King to expel all Englishmen from his court, and confide to Poitevins and Bretons the guard of his person, the receipt of his revenue, the administration of justice, the custody of all the royal castles, the wardship of all the young nobility, and the marriages of the principal heiresses.  But the ascendency of the foreigners, however great it might be, was not of very long duration.  The barons refused to obey the royal summons to come to the council:  the Earl Marshal unfurled the standard of rebellion in Wales, and the clergy joined with the laity in censuring the measures of government.  Edmund, the new archbishop of Canterbury, attended by several other prelates, waited on Henry.  He reminded the King that his