Before the end of 1264 the vigour of Earl Simon triumphed over some of his immediate difficulties.  In August he summoned the military forces of the realm to meet the threatened invasion.  Adverse storms, however, dispersed Queen Eleanor’s fleet, and her mercenaries, weary of the long delays that had exhausted her resources, went home in disgust.  This left Simon free to betake himself to the west, and on December 15 he forced the marcher lords to accept a pacification called the Provisions of Worcester, by which they agreed to withdraw for a year and a day to Ireland, leaving their families and estates in the hands of the ruling faction.

On the day after the signature of the treaty, Henry, who accompanied Simon to the west, issued from Worcester the writs for a parliament that sat in London from January to March in 1265.  From the circumstances of the case this famous assembly could only be a meeting of the supporters of the existing government.  So scanty was its following among the magnates that writs of summons were only issued to five earls and eighteen barons, though the strong muster of bishops, abbots, and priors showed that the papal anathema had done little to shake the fidelity of the clergy to Montfort’s cause.  The special feature of the gathering, however, was the summoning of two knights from every shire, side by side with the barons of the faithful Cinque Ports and two representatives from every city and borough, convened by writs sent, not to the sheriff, after later custom, but to the cities and boroughs directly.  It was the presence of this strong popular element which long caused this parliament to be regarded as the first really representative assembly in our history, and gained for Earl Simon the fame of being the creator of the House of Commons.  Modern research has shown that neither of these views can be substantiated.  It was no novelty for the crown to strengthen the baronial parliaments by the representatives of the shire-moots, and there were earlier precedents for the holding meetings of the spokesmen of the cities and boroughs.  What was new was the combination of these two types of representatives in a single assembly, which was convoked, not merely for a particular administrative purpose, but for a great political object.  The real novelty and originality of Earl Simon’s action lay in his giving a fresh proof of his disposition to fall back upon the support of the ordinary citizen against the hostility or indifference of the magnates, to whom the men of 1258 wished to limit all political deliberation.  This is in itself a sufficient indication of policy to give Leicester an almost unique position among the statesmen to whom the development of our representative institutions are due.  But just as his parliament was not in any sense our first representative assembly, so it did not include in any complete sense a House of Commons at all.  We must still wait for a generation before the rival and disciple of Montfort, Edward, the king’s son, established the popular element in our parliament on a permanent basis.  Yet in the links which connect the early baronial councils with the assemblies of the three estates of the fourteenth century, not one is more important than Montfort’s parliament of January, 1265.