the train, the clerical opposition showed the barons the method of successful resistance.  The rejection of Henry’s demands for money in the assemblies of 1257 started the movement that spread to the baronage in the parliaments of 1258.  In the two memorable gatherings of that year the discontent, which had smouldered for a generation, at last burst into flame.  In the next chapter we shall see in what fashion the fire kindled.

The futility of the political history of the weary middle period of the reign suggests, to those who make the history of the state the criterion of every aspect of the national fortunes, a corresponding barrenness and lack of interest in other aspects of national life.  Yet a remedy for Henry’s misrule was only found because the age of political retrogression was in all other fields of action an epoch of unexampled progress.  The years during which the strong centralised government of the Angevin kings was breaking down under Henry’s weak rule were years which, to the historian of civilisation, are among the most fruitful in our annals.  In vivid contrast to the tale of misrule, the historian can turn to the revival of religious and intellectual life, the growing delight in ideas and knowledge, the consummation of the best period of art, and the spread of a nobler civilisation which make the middle portion of the thirteenth century the flowering time of English medieval life.  It is part of this strange contrast that Henry, the obstacle to all political progress, was himself a chief supporter of the religious and intellectual movements which were so deeply influencing the age.

Much has been said of the alien invasion, and of the strong national opposition it excited.  But insularity is not a good thing in itself, and the natural English attitude to the foreigners tended to confound good and bad alike in a general condemnation.  Even the Savoyards were by no means as evil as the English thought them, and Henry in welcoming his kinsmen was not merely moved by selfish and unworthy motives; he believed that he was showing his openness to ideas and his welcome to all good things from whencesoever they came.  There were, in fact, two tendencies, antagonistic yet closely related, which were operative, not only in England but all over western Europe, during this period.  Nations, becoming conscious and proud of their unity, dwelt, often unreasonably, on the points wherein they differed from other peoples, and strongly resented alien interference.  At the same time the closer relations between states, the result of improved government, better communications, increased commercial and social intercourse, the strengthening of common ideals, and the development of cosmopolitan types of the knight, the scholar, and the priest, were deepening the union of western Christendom on common lines.  Neither the political nor the military nor the ecclesiastical ideals of the early middle ages were based upon nationality, but rather on that ecumenical