knights from every county to the Parliament assembled after the battle of Lewes.  The Provisions of Oxford, in stipulating for attendance and counsel on the part of twelve delegates of the “commonalty,” gave the first indication of a yet wider appeal to the people at large.  But it was the weakness of his party among the baronage at this great crisis which drove Earl Simon to a constitutional change of mighty issue in our history.  As before, he summoned two knights from every county.  But he created a new force in English politics when he summoned to sit beside them two citizens from every borough.  The attendance of delegates from the towns had long been usual in the county courts when any matter respecting their interests was in question; but it was the writ issued by Earl Simon that first summoned the merchant and the trader to sit beside the knight of the shire, the baron, and the bishop in the parliament of the realm.

[Sidenote:  Simon’s difficulties]

It is only this great event however which enables us to understand the large and prescient nature of Earl Simon’s designs.  Hardly a few months had passed away since the victory of Lewes when the burghers took their seats at Westminster, yet his government was tottering to its fall.  We know little of the Parliament’s acts.  It seems to have chosen Simon as Justiciar and to have provided for Edward’s liberation, though he was still to live under surveillance at Hereford and to surrender his earldom of Chester to Simon, who was thus able to communicate with his Welsh allies.  The Earl met the dangers from without with complete success.  In September 1264 a general muster of the national forces on Barham Down and a contrary wind put an end to the projects of invasion entertained by the mercenaries whom the queen had collected in Flanders; the threats of France died away into negotiations; the Papal Legate was forbidden to cross the Channel, and his bulls of excommunication were flung into the sea.  But the difficulties at home grew more formidable every day.  The restraint upon Henry and Edward jarred against the national feeling of loyalty, and estranged the mass of Englishmen who always side with the weak.  Small as the patriotic party among the barons had been from the first, it grew smaller as dissensions broke out over the spoils of victory.  The Earl’s justice and resolve to secure the public peace told heavily against him.  John Giffard left him because he refused to allow him to exact ransom from a prisoner, contrary to the agreement made after Lewes.  A greater danger opened when the young Earl of Gloucester, though enriched with the estates of the foreigners, held himself aloof from the Justiciar, and resented Leicester’s prohibition of a tournament, his naming the wardens of the royal castles by his own authority, his holding Edward’s fortresses on the Welsh marches by his own garrisons.

[Sidenote:  Edward and Gloucester]