The dissensions among the barons encouraged Henry to shake off the tutelage of the fifteen.  As soon as he was reconciled with his son, he charged Leicester with treason.[1] “But, thanks be to God, the earl answered to all these points with such force that the king could do nothing against him.”  Unable to break down his enemy by direct attack, Henry followed one of the worst precedents of his father’s reign by beseeching Alexander IV. to relieve him of his oath to observe the Provisions.  On April 13, 1261, a bull was issued annulling the whole of the legislation of 1258 and 1259, and freeing the king from his sworn promise.

    [1] Bemont, Simon de Montfort, Appendix xxxvii., pp. 343-53.

William of Valence was already back in England, and restored to his old dignities.  His return was the easier because his brother, Aymer, the most hated of the Poitevins, had died soon after his consecration to Winchester.  On June 14, 1261, the papal bull was read before the assembled parliament at Winchester.  There Henry removed the baronial ministers and replaced them by his own friends.  Chief among the sufferers was Hugh Despenser, who had succeeded Hugh Bigod as justiciar; and Bigod himself was expelled from the custody of Dover Castle.  In the summer Henry issued a proclamation, declaring that the right of choosing his council and garrisoning his castles was among the inalienable attributes of the crown.  England was little inclined to rebel, for the return of prosperity and good harvests made men more contented.

The repudiation of the Provisions restored unity to the baronage.  The defections had been serious, and it was said that only five of the twenty-four still adhered to the opposition.  But the crisis forced Leicester and Gloucester to forget their recent feuds, and co-operate once more against the king.  They saw that their salvation from Henry’s growing strength lay in appealing to a wider public than that which they had hitherto addressed.  Still posing as the heads of the government established by the Provisions, they summoned three knights from each shire to attend an assembly at St. Alban’s.  This appeal to the landed gentry alarmed the king so much that he issued counter-writs to the sheriffs ordering them to send the knights, not to the baronial camp at St. Alban’s, but to his own court at Windsor.  Neither party was as yet prepared for battle.  The death of Alexander IV, soon after the publication of his bull tied the hands of the king.  At the same time the renewed dissensions of Leicester and Gloucester paralysed the baronage.  Before long Simon withdrew to the continent, leaving everything in Gloucester’s hands.  At last, on December 7, a treaty of pacification was patched up, and the king announced that he was ready to pardon those who accepted its conditions.  But there was no permanence in the settlement, and the king, the chief gainer by it, was soon pressing the new pope, Urban IV., to confirm the bull of Alexander.