showed the resolve of the nation that the strife should cease.  They would first establish peace, if peace were possible, they said, and then answer the king’s demand.  Twelve commissioners, with Earl Gilbert at their head, were appointed on Henry’s assent to arrange terms on reconciliation.  They at once decided that none should be utterly disinherited for their part in the troubles, but that liberty of redemption should be left open to all.  Furious at the prospect of being forced to disgorge their spoil, Mortimer and the ultra-royalists broke out in mad threats of violence, even against the life of the Papal legate who had pressed for the reconciliation.  But the power of the ultra-royalists was over.  The general resolve was not to be shaken by the clamour of a faction, and Mortimer’s rout at Brecknock by Llewelyn, the one defeat that chequered the tide of success, had damaged that leader’s influence.  Backed by Edward and Earl Gilbert, the legate met their opposition with a threat of excommunication, and Mortimer withdrew sullenly from the camp.  Fresh trouble in the country and the seizure of the Isle of Ely by a band of the Disinherited quickened the labours of the Twelve.  At the close of September they pronounced their award, restoring the lands to all who made submission on a graduated scale of redemption, promising indemnity for all wrong done during the troubles, and leaving the restoration of the house of De Montfort to the royal will.  But to these provisions was added an emphatic demand that “the king fully keep and observe those liberties of the Church, charters of liberties, and forest charters, which he is expressly and by his own mouth bound to preserve and keep.”  “Let the King,” they add, “establish on a lasting foundation those concessions which he has hitherto made of his own will and not on compulsion, and those needful ordinances which have been devised by his subjects and by his own good pleasure.”

[Sidenote:  Close of the Struggle]

With this Award the struggle came to an end.  The garrison of Kenilworth held out indeed till November, and the full benefit of the Ban was only secured when Earl Gilbert in the opening of the following year suddenly appeared in arms and occupied London.  But the Earl was satisfied, the Disinherited were at last driven from Ely, and Llewelyn was brought to submission by the appearance of an army at Shrewsbury.  All was over by the close of 1267.  His father’s age and weakness, his own brilliant military successes, left Edward practically in possession of the royal power; and his influence at once made itself felt.  There was no attempt to return to the misrule of Henry’s reign, to his projects of continental aggrandizement or internal despotism.  The constitutional system of government for which the Barons had fought was finally adopted by the Crown, and the Parliament of Marlborough which assembled in November 1267 renewed the provisions by which the baronage had remedied