broke out in a violent altercation.  The Earl offered to resign his post if the money he had spent was repaid him, and appealed to Henry’s word.  Henry hotly retorted that he was bound by no promise to a false traitor.  Simon at once gave Henry the lie; “and but that thou bearest the name of king it had been a bad hour for thee when thou utteredst such a word!” A formal reconciliation was brought about, and the Earl once more returned to Gascony, but before winter had come he was forced to withdraw to France.  The greatness of his reputation was shown in an offer which its nobles made him of the regency of their realm during the absence of King Lewis from the land.  But the offer was refused; and Henry, who had himself undertaken the pacification of Gascony, was glad before the close of 1253 to recall its old ruler to do the work he had failed to do.

[Sidenote:  Simon’s temper]

The Earl’s character had now thoroughly developed.  He inherited the strict and severe piety of his father; he was assiduous in his attendance on religious services whether by night or day.  In his correspondence with Adam Marsh we see him finding patience under his Gascon troubles in a perusal of the Book of Job.  His life was pure and singularly temperate; he was noted for his scant indulgence in meat, drink, or sleep.  Socially he was cheerful and pleasant in talk; but his natural temper was quick and ardent, his sense of honour keen, his speech rapid and trenchant.  His impatience of contradiction, his fiery temper, were in fact the great stumbling-blocks in his after career.  His best friends marked honestly this fault, and it shows the greatness of the man that he listened to their remonstrances.  “Better is a patient man,” writes honest Friar Adam, “than a strong man, and he who can rule his own temper than he who storms a city.”  But the one characteristic which overmastered all was what men at that time called his “constancy,” the firm immoveable resolve which trampled even death under foot in its loyalty to the right.  The motto which Edward the First chose as his device, “Keep troth,” was far truer as the device of Earl Simon.  We see in his correspondence with what a clear discernment of its difficulties both at home and abroad he “thought it unbecoming to decline the danger of so great an exploit” as the reduction of Gascony to peace and order; but once undertaken, he persevered in spite of the opposition he met with, the failure of all support or funds from England, and the king’s desertion of his cause, till the work was done.  There was the same steadiness of will and purpose in his patriotism.  The letters of Robert Grosseteste show how early Simon had learned to sympathize with the Bishop in his resistance to Rome, and at the crisis of the contest he offered him his own support and that of his associates.  But Robert passed away, and as the tide of misgovernment mounted higher and higher the Earl silently trained himself for the day of trial.  The fruit of his self-discipline was seen when the crisis came.  While other men wavered and faltered and fell away, the enthusiastic love of the people clung to the grave, stern soldier who “stood like a pillar,” unshaken by promise or threat or fear of death, by the oath he had sworn.