Thus ended the first minority since the Conquest.  The successful restoration of law and order when the king was a child, showed that a strong king was not absolutely necessary for good government.  From the exercise of royal authority by ministers without the personal intervention of the monarch arose the ideas of limited monarchy, the responsibility of the official, and the constitutional rights of the baronial council to appoint ministers and control the administration.  We also discern, almost for the first time, the action of an inner ministerial council which was ultimately to develop into the consilium ordinarium of a later age.

No sudden changes attended the royal majority.  Those who had persuaded Henry to dismiss Bishop Peter had no policy beyond getting rid of a hated rival.  The new Earl of Kent continued to hold office as justiciar for five years, and his ascendency is even more marked in the years 1227 to 1232 than it had been between 1224 and 1227.  Hubert still found the task of ruling England by no means easy.  With the mitigation of home troubles foreign affairs assumed greater importance, and England’s difficulties with France, the efforts to establish cordial relations with the empire, the ever-increasing aggressions of Llewelyn of Wales, and the chronic troubles of Ireland, involved the country in large expenses with little compensating advantage.  Not less uneasy were the results of the growing encroachments of the papacy and the increasing inability of the English clergy to face them.  Papal taxation, added to the burden of national taxation, induced discontent that found a ready scapegoat in the justiciar.  The old and the new baronial opposition combined to denounce Hubert as the true cause of all evils.  The increasing personal influence of the young king complicated the situation.  In his efforts to deal with all these problems Hubert became involved in the storm of obloquy which finally brought about his fall.

At the accession of Henry III., the truce for five years concluded between his father and Philip Augustus on September 18, 1214, had still three years to run.  The expedition of Louis to England might well seem to have broken it, but the prudent disavowal by Philip II. of his son’s sacrilegious enterprise made it a point of policy for the French King to regard it as still in force, and neither John nor the earl marshal had a mind to face the enmity of the father as well as the invasion of the son.  Accordingly the truce ran out its full time, and in 1220 Honorius III., ever zealous for peace between Christian sovereigns, procured its prolongation for four years.  Before this had expired, the accession of Louis VIII. in 1223 raised the old enemy of King Henry to the throne of France.  Louis still coveted the English throne, and desired to complete the conquest of Henry’s French dominions in France.  His accession soon involved England in a new struggle, luckily delayed until the worst of the disorders at home had been overcome.