Once more a baronial committee put the royal authority into commission, and ruled England through ministers of its own choice.  While agreeing in this essential feature, the settlement of 1264 did not merely reproduce the constitution of 1258.  It was simpler than its forerunner, since there was no longer any need of the cumbrous temporary machinery for the revision of the whole system of government, nor for the numerous committees and commissions to which previously so many functions had been assigned.  The main tasks before the new rulers were not constitution-making but administration and defence.  Moreover, the later constitution shows some recognition of the place due to the knights of the shire and their constituents.  It is less closely oligarchical than the previous scheme.  This may partly be due to the continued divisions of the greater barons, but it is probably also in large measure owing to the preponderance of Simon of Montfort.  The young Earl of Gloucester and the simple and saintly Bishop of Chichester were but puppets in his hands.  He was the real elector who nominated the council, and thus controlled the government.  Every act of the new administration reflects the boldness and largeness of his spirit.

The pacification after Lewes was more apparent than real, and there were many restless spirits that scorned to accept the settlement which Henry had so meekly adopted.  The marchers were in arms in the west, and were specially formidable because they detained in their custody the numerous prisoners captured at the sack of Northampton.  The fugitives from Lewes were holding their own behind the walls of Pevensey, though Earl Warenne and other leaders had made their escape to France, where they joined the army which Queen Eleanor had collected on the north coast for the purpose of invading England and restoring her husband to power.  The papacy and the whole official forces of the Church were in bitter hostility to the new system.  The collapse of Henry’s rule had ruined the papal plans in Sicily, where Manfred easily maintained his ground against so strong a successor of the unlucky Edmund as Charles of Anjou.  The papal legate, Guy Foulquois, was waiting at Boulogne for admission into England, and, far from being conciliated by his appointment as an arbitrator, was dexterously striving to make the arbitration ineffective, by summoning the bishops adhering to Montfort to appear before him, and sending them back with orders to excommunicate Earl Simon and all his supporters.  The only gleam of hope was to be found in the unwillingness of the King of France to interfere actively in the domestic disputes of England.  The death of Urban IV. for the moment brought relief, but, after a long vacancy, the new pope proved to be none other than the legate Guy, who in February, 1265, mounted the papal throne as Clement IV.  It was to no purpose that Walter of Cantilupe assembled the patriotic bishops and appealed to a general council, or that radical friars like the author of the Song of Lewes formulated the popular policy in spirited verse.  The greatest forces of the time were steadily opposed to the revolutionary government, and rare strength and boldness were necessary to make head against them.