were the twelve nominees of the barons.  The only ecclesiastic was Walter of Cantilupe, Bishop of Worcester, and the only alien was Earl Simon of Leicester.  With him were three other earls, Richard of Clare, Earl of Gloucester, Roger Bigod, earl marshal and Earl of Norfolk, and Humphrey Bohun, Earl of Hereford.  Those of baronial rank were Roger Mortimer, the strongest of the marchers, Hugh Bigod, the brother of the earl marshal, John FitzGeoffrey, Richard Grey, William Bardolf, Peter Montfort, and Hugh Despenser.

The twenty-four drew up a plan of reform which left little to be desired in thoroughness.  The Provisions of Oxford, as the new constitution was styled, were speedily laid before the barons and adopted.  By it a standing council of fifteen was established, with whose advice and consent Henry was henceforth to exercise all his authority.  Even this council was not to be without supervision.  Thrice in the year another committee of twelve was to treat with the fifteen on the common affairs of the realm.  This rather narrow body was created, we are told, to save the expense involved in too frequent meetings of the magnates.  A third aristocratic junto of twenty-four was appointed to make grants of money to the crown.  All aliens were to be expelled from office and from the custody of royal castles.  New ministers, castellans, and escheators were appointed under stringent conditions and under the safeguard of new oaths.  The original twenty-four were not yet discharged from office.  They had still to draw up schemes for the reform of the household of king and queen, and for the amendment of the exchange of London.  Moreover, “Be it remembered,” ran one of the articles, “that the estate of Holy Church be amended by the twenty-four elected to reform the realm, when they shall find time and place”.

For the first time in our history the king was forced to stand aside from the discharge of his undoubted functions, and suffer them to be exercised by a committee of magnates.  The conception of limited monarchy, which had been foreshadowed in the early struggles of Henry’s long reign, was triumphantly vindicated, and, after weary years of waiting, the baronial victors demanded more than had ever been suggested by the most free interpretation of the Great Charter.  The body that controlled the crown was, it is true, a narrow one.  But whatever was lost by its limitation, was more than gained by the absolute freedom of the whole movement from any suspicion of the separatist tendencies of the earlier feudalism.  The barons tacitly accepted the principle that England was a unity, and that it must be ruled as a single whole.  The triumph of the national movement of the thirteenth century was assured when the most feudal class of the community thus frankly abandoned the ancient baronial contention that each baron should rule in isolation over his own estates, a tradition which, when carried out for a brief period under Stephen, had set up “as many kings or rather tyrants as lords of castles”.  The feudal period was over:  the national idea was triumphant.  This victory becomes specially significant when we remember how large a share the barons of the Welsh march, the only purely feudal region in the country, took in the movement against the King.