the county court, so that a knowledge of its contents might be attained by every man.  It is perhaps the first important proclamation issued in English since the coming of the Normans.  Early in 1259 Richard, King of the Romans, set out to revisit England.  He was met at Saint Omer by a deputation of magnates, who told him that he could only be allowed to land after taking an oath to observe the Provisions.  Richard blustered, but soon gave in his submission.  His adhesion to the reforms marks the last step in the revolution.

The new constitution worked without interruption until the end of 1259.  Throughout that period domestic affairs were uneventful, and the efforts of the ministry were chiefly concerned in securing peace abroad.  In 1258 Wales had been in revolt, Scotland unfriendly, and France threatening.  A truce, ill observed, was made with Llewelyn, who found it worth while to be cautious, seeing that his natural enemies, but sometime associates, the marchers, had a preponderant share in the government.  The Scots were easier to satisfy, for there was at the time no real hostility between either kings or peoples.  The chief event of this period is the conclusion of the first peace with France since the wars of John and Philip Augustus.  The protracted negotiations which preceded it took the king and his chief councillors abroad, and that made it easier to carry on the new domestic system without friction.

Since the friendly personal intercourse held between Henry and Louis IX. in 1254, the relations between England and France had become less cordial.  The revival of the English power in Gascony, the Anglo-Castilian alliance, and the election of Richard of Cornwall to the German kingship irritated the French, to whom the persistent English claim to Normandy and Anjou, and the repudiation of the Aquitanian homage, were perpetual sources of annoyance.  The French championship of Alfonso against Richard achieved the double end of checking English pretensions, and cooling the friendship between England and Castile.  St. Louis, however, was always ready to treat for peace, while the revolution of 1258 made all parties in England anxious to put a speedy end to the unsettled relations between the two realms.  Negotiations were begun as early as 1257, and made some progress; but the decisive step was taken immediately after the prorogation of the reforming parliament in the spring of 1258.  During May a strangely constituted embassy treated for peace at Paris, where Montfort and Hugh Bigod worked side by side with two of the Lusignans and Peter of Savoy.  They concluded a provisional treaty in time for the negotiators to take their part in the Mad Parliament.  The unsettled state of affairs in England, however, delayed the ratification of the treaty.  Arrangements had been made for its publication at Cambrai, but the fifteen dared not allow Henry to escape from their tutelage, and Louis refused to treat save with the king himself.  There were