solemn feast-day the king recognized Matthew, and bidding him sit on the middle step between the floor and the throne begged him to write the story of the day’s proceedings.  While on a visit to St. Alban’s he invited him to his table and chamber, and enumerated by name two hundred and fifty of the English baronies for his information.  But all this royal patronage has left little mark on his work.  “The case,” as Matthew says, “of historical writers is hard, for if they tell the truth they provoke men, and if they write what is false they offend God.”  With all the fulness of the school of court historians, such as Benedict and Hoveden, to which in form he belonged, Matthew Paris combines an independence and patriotism which is strange to their pages.  He denounces with the same unsparing energy the oppression of the Papacy and of the king.  His point of view is neither that of a courtier nor of a churchman but of an Englishman, and the new national tone of his chronicle is but the echo of a national sentiment which at last bound nobles and yeomen and churchmen together into a people resolute to wrest freedom from the Crown.

[Sidenote:  Wales]

The nation was outraged like the Church.  Two solemn confirmations of the Charter failed to bring about any compliance with its provisions.  In 1248, in 1249, and again in 1255 the great Council fruitlessly renewed its demand for a regular ministry, and the growing resolve of the nobles to enforce good government was seen in their offer of a grant on condition that the great officers of the Crown were appointed in the Council of the Baronage.  But Henry refused their offer with scorn and sold his plate to the citizens of London to find payment for his household.  A spirit of mutinous defiance broke out on the failure of all legal remedy.  When the Earl of Norfolk refused him aid Henry answered with a threat.  “I will send reapers and reap your fields for you,” he said.  “And I will send you back the heads of your reapers,” replied the Earl.  Hampered by the profusion of the court and the refusal of supplies, the Crown was in fact penniless; and yet never was money more wanted, for a trouble which had long pressed upon the English kings had now grown to a height that called for decisive action.  Even his troubles at home could not blind Henry to the need of dealing with the difficulty of Wales.  Of the three Welsh states into which all that remained unconquered of Britain had been broken by the victories of Deorham and Chester, two had long ceased to exist.  The country between the Clyde and the Dee had been gradually absorbed by the conquests of Northumbria and the growth of the Scot monarchy.  West Wales, between the British Channel and the estuary of the Severn, had yielded to the sword of Ecgberht.  But a fiercer resistance prolonged the independence of the great central portion which alone in modern language preserves the name of Wales.  Comprising in itself the largest and most powerful of the British