continuing the war (April 18, 1217); his army was defeated at Lincoln (May 20); a fleet sent from France with reinforcements suffered the same fate off Dover (Aug. 21); and he himself was besieged in London by Pembroke, with whom he concluded a truce and quitted England (Sept. 11, 1217).

But the barons kept the royal castles that they had seized; and Louis, becoming king Louis VIII. on his father's death (1223), not only broke his promise to restore Normandy, but invaded Poitou, and took Rochelle (1224). Henry crossed over to France, but gained no reputation in the field; while, in every part of his government, he began to show the weakness of his character. He had lost the aid of Pembroke by death (1218), and he quarrelled with his faithful counsellor, the justiciary Hubert de Burgh (1231), and placed himself in the hands of Peter des Roches, bishop of Winchester, who had formerly gained discredit as a counsellor of John, and had been already once dismissed by Henry. This prelate, a Poitevin by birth, filled all offices with his countrymen ; and a further irruption of foreigners was caused by the king's marriage with Eleanor, daughter of the count of Provence (1236). The kingdom was threatened with another civil war, and hostilities actually occurred on the Welsh border and in Ireland with the party hostile to Des Roches; but peace was soon restored, and the insurgents pardoned. During all his reign, however, the king was engaged in conflicts with his nobles.

But before these intestine commotions reached their height Henry engaged in several foreign wars. In 1242 he made war upon Louis IX. of France, and lost his possessions in Poitou. In 1253 he repelled an invasion of Guienne by the king of Castile, but incurred an enormous debt. In 1255 he was tempted by the pope, whom he supported against the emperor Frederick II., to engage in an enterprise for the conquest of Naples, which only plunged him deeper into debt, and more embroiled him with his barons. Indeed his subserviency to the pope was one of the chief disgraces of his reign. The best of the ecclesiastical benefices were given to Italians; and the pecuniary exactions of the see of Rome, in various forms, became intolerable.

Meanwhile Henry's favourites were continually leading him to violate the Great Charter, though he had solemnly confirmed it several times. At length the prevailing discontent found an open utterance under the guidance of SIMON DE MONTFORT, earl of Leicester. This celebrated man was the younger son of Simon de Montfort, who had conducted a crusade against the Albigenses, and the brother-in-law of the king. He secretly convened the chief barons, and united them in a confederacy, not only to redress the ENG.

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grievances of the kingdom, but to take its government into their own hands. At a parliament held by the king, to ask supplies for his enterprise against Naples (May 2, 1258), the barons appeared fully armed, and exacted from Henry a promise to assemble another parliament to settle the affairs of the realm.

This "Mad Parliament," as it came afterwards to be called, met at Oxford on the 11th of June, and the king was really a prisoner to the armed barons, who appointed fifteen of their own number, with De Montfort at their head, to draw up a scheme of reform, to which they bound the king beforehand by an oath. Their measures, known as the Provisions of Oxford, were these-that four knights should be chosen by each county to state their grievances, and that three sessions of parliament should be held every year. There were also provisions for the elections of sheriffs, for guarding estates from foreigners, and for other purposes.

The barons followed up these enactments by taking all power into their own hands, changing all the great officers of state, and even appointing a committee of twelve to wield the whole power of the parliament in the intervals of its session. By enacting that the circuits of the itinerant justices should be held only every seven years, they removed a legal check on their power. These excesses led to a reaction in the public mind; and the barons became divided among themselves by the rivalry of the earls of Leicester and Gloucester. At this crisis the king visited France, then under the government of Louis IX., who has gained the name of ST. LOUIS from his personal piety and his crusade against the Moors of Tunis. With him Henry arranged the pending questions concerning his French dominions, by finally surrendering Normandy, which he had no hope of recovering, while he was confirmed in the possession of Guienne, and was to receive Poitou back after the death of Louis (Nov. 1259). These causes of difference being removed, Louis was prepared to mediate between Henry and his rebellious subjects.

During the king's absence in France the dissensions between the barons had threatened a new civil war, in which prince Edward (afterwards so celebrated as Edward I.) prepared to take a part by levying troops. The king mistrusted his son's intentions, but Edward cleared himself of the suspicion of treason by a solemn oath. The earl of Gloucester went over to the king's party, and Henry was thus encouraged, his conscience being fortified by a papal absolution, to revoke all his concessions; while Edward, pleading the obligation of his oath, sided with the barons. The king fortified himself in London, and De Montfort fled to France; but the death of Gloucester deprived Henry of his main stay, and he was again compelled to surrender to the barons, and to promise

to abide by the Provisions of Oxford, which were promulgated in a Great Council held at London, Sept. 8, 1263.

About the same time (Oct. 3) an event occurred in Scotland momentous enough to interrupt the course of our narrative-the defeat of an invading Norwegian host by king Alexander III. at Largs, on the coast of Ayrshire.

The king and the barons at length appealed to Louis, who, in a council at Amiens (Jan. 23, 1264), annulled the Provisions of Oxford, and recommended a general amnesty, declaring also that the people should preserve their ancient liberties. But these terms were distasteful to the barons, and the civil war became fiercer than ever Henry and prince Edward returned from France and united their forces; while De Montfort made the castle of Kenilworth his headquarters; and the country was wasted on every side. At last a pitched battle was fought at Lewes (May 13, 1264), when the king and his brother Richard, earl of Cornwall, were taken prisoners. A truce, called the Mise of Lewes, was imposed by De Montfort upon prince Edward, who surrendered himself a prisoner in his father's place, with his cousin prince Henry, the son of the duke of Cornwall. The triumph of the barons was complete. An attempt made by Mortimer, earl of March, to renew the war in Wales was crushed by De Montfort, with the aid of the Welsh chieftain Llewellyn. A fleet collected by the queen to invade England was blockaded in the Flemish ports, till the soldiers dispersed. The papal bull, excommunicating the barons, was torn in pieces at Dover, and De Montfort kept his Christmas like a king at Kenilworth.

The new year forms an epoch for ever memorable in our constitutional history. On the 20th of January, 1265, there assembled at London, on the summons of De Montfort, a parliament composed on a different model from any previous great council of the kingdom. Besides the chief nobles and prelates, who were summoned by writ, De Montfort directed the return of 100 of the dignified clergy and of two knights from each shire, and two representatives of every city and borough. These two classes, though for the present sitting in one chamber with the nobles, formed the germ of the HOUSE OF COMMONS.

This great service to his country was De Montfort's last act of power. He was deserted by the earl of Gloucester, the son of his oid rival; and prince Edward escaped from his guards (May 28), and joined the army of Mortimer in Wales. De Montfort marched to meet him, under the banner of the king, whose person he carried with him. A battle was fought at Evesham, in Worcestershire (Aug. 4, 1265), in which prince Edward was victorious, and De Montfort himself was among the slain. His fate was all but shared by Henry, whom he had placed in the front of the battle, and who

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only saved his life by exclaiming to a knight who had wounded him, I am Henry of Winchester, your king." The corpse of De Montfort was mangled by the victors; but the people long cherished his memory, as the champion of their liberties; and the impulse which he gave to our constitutional freedom may be allowed to excuse great faults of personal ambition. The remaining partisans of De Montfort, whose chief strongholds were at Kenilworth Castle and in the Isle of Ely, were gradually brought to submission by prince Edward, who granted to them terms which are known as "the Award of Kenilworth." A parliament held at that place (Nov. 1266) re-established the king's authority, on the condition of his observing the Great Charter. The short remainder of Henry's reign was passed in peace. So far, indeed, was tranquillity restored, that prince Edward ventured to follow the impulse of his chivalrous spirit and the example of the French king by embarking in a new crusade (1269); and he was still absent when Henry III. expired at Bury St. Edmunds, on the 16th of November, 1272, in the 66th year of his age and the 57th of his reign. He was buried at Westminster on the 20th, and fealty was at once sworn to his son Edward, "though men were ignorant whether he was alive, for he had gone to distant countries beyond the sea, warring against the enemies of Christ."

The period of nearly a century, from the death of Henry II. to that of Henry III., completed the transition from the Norman sovereignty to our English constitutional monarchy. The people had become one; and all between the greater barons and the villeins were equal in the eye of the law. Hence the readiness with which all classes united against the encroachments of the crown; and hence also the necessity, which the barons felt, of acting with the commons. Their close confederacy with the great boroughs is proved by the fact that London was always on their side, except when the king seized the Tower by force. The absence of Richard, the tyranny of John, and the weakness of Henry, forced their subjects to take into their own hands the settlement of that constitution which was founded by the Great Charter and finally established by the parliament of De Montfort.

During this period also was effected the fusion of the Anglo-Saxon and the Norman French into the ENGLISH LANGUAGE; and the germs of the noble Literature of the next age began to show themselves.

The 13th century was a great period too in the history of English Art; for in it was completed the transition from the heavy Saxon and the massive Norman architecture to that genuine and exquisitely beautiful ENGLISH style which is still unhappily called Gothic. Westminster Abbey, which Henry III. nearly lived to complete, may be taken as a type of the many glorious monuments of the art that our own generation is only now recovering.

THE HOUSE OF PLANTAGENET-continued.

EDWARD I.; EDWARD II. A.D. 1272-1327.

EDWARD I. (1272-1307), surnamed LONGSHANKS, from his stature, was born at Westminster, June 18, 1239, and married Eleanor of Castile in 1254. He departed, as we have seen, for the Holy Land a few years after his father's recovery of his throne (1270). He first went to join St. Louis before Tunis; but finding that he was already dead, Edward sailed on to Acre, gained several battles against the Saracens, and took Nazareth (1271). One of the fanatic sect called Assassins penetrated to his camp and inflicted on him a wound, from which his wife Eleanor is said to have sucked the poison, and so to have saved his life (Ju. 12, 1272). He soon after made a truce with the infidels, and sailed from Acre on the 15th of August.

It was in Sicily that he received the news of his father's death,