The arguments upon both sides were strong. The King's party urged that the King should be free; that he is no longer a King if he does not rule as he pleases. He has the same right to rule the kingdom that the Barons have to rule their own estates, and those who would interfere to make a slave of him are robbers and worse, for they are laying unholy hands upon the Lord's anointed. The Barons' arguments were also culled from Holy Writ, and proved how deeply the teachings of the Franciscans were working in the hearts of the people. The kingdom has to be protected as well as the King. If the King listens to false counsellors, his Barons must guard him from such. Obedience to law is not slavery, and God's laws are for monarch as well as for peasants. True freedom consists in abstaining from evil. The King's people are God's people, and must be ruled in His fear, not in a spirit of greed and oppression. As Christ laid open all things to His disciples, so should a King consult on all weighty matters with his nobles. If he dishonour them and oppress his people, he cannot wonder if he is hated and disobeyed. These arguments sunk deeply into the minds of the people, and they looked to De Montfort as their hope and deliverer. The past years had been full of trouble and vicissitudes. The King had escaped from the tutelage and restraint imposed upon him, had made himself practical master of London and even of the kingdom for a while, and had set at open defiance the Provisions of Oxford. His son, Prince Edward, had opposed him in this; had said that he, for his own part, could not reconcile it to his conscience to break the oath which he had sworn on that occasion; and had in effect joined himself to the party of the Barons. This had alarmed his father, who perhaps felt that his son was a better leader and stronger spirit than himself, and Edward had been sent off to Gascony to his duties there. As it happened, however, the De Montforts, his cousins, were there also at that time, and the Prince spent most of his time with them, thus adding to the disquietude of his father. Henry himself had been over to France carrying on the negotiations with Louis concerning his renunciation of his futile claims upon that realm; and upon his return he had asserted himself by summoning a Parliament in the old form, quite irrespective of the Provisions of Oxford, and by seeking to obtain from the Pope a bull absolving him from the oath taken in that city under the compulsion of the Barons. The Pope, always ready to take the part of so pious a son, and one who had been so useful to him as a tool, was ready enough to grant this absolution, which was couched in characteristic terms by the wily prelate:--