A far greater man took the post he thus resigned. Simon de Montfort, destined to be the real national leader of England, was rising into importance. The sister and heiress of Count Robert of Leicester had married the Count of Montfort, and died in 1204. In 1215, the whole English property had been given to Ralph Earl of Chester. Simon de Montfort, the Conqueror of the Albigenses, never possessed it, but his eldest son Almaric, after the death of the Earl of Chester, in 1232, demanded the property and honours of Leicester for his younger brother Simon, who was thus acknowledged as the owner of the property. He held the bason of water as High-Steward at the Queen’s coronation, shortly after married the King’s sister, the widow of William, second Earl of Pembroke, and succeeded in getting that marriage acknowledged by Gregory IX. in 1238. Like all those who had to do with Henry, he was obliged to bear extraordinary changes of fortune from the fickle character of the King. An angry quarrel drove him abroad, and, in 1240, in company with Richard of Cornwall, he set out for the Holy Land. [Sidenote: Revival in the Church.] [Sidenote: Grostête.] During their absence the government of England grew continually worse. Men began to weary of the personal government of the King. For several years the great offices of justiciary and chancellor had been left unfilled, and their duties performed by subordinate officials, upon whom the King lavished his favours. One of the chief of these was Mansell, who is said to have held no less than 700 livings, and to have been in the yearly receipt of 8000 marks. The Church was gradually driven to make common cause with the lay opposition. It was a time of spiritual revival. The great monastic orders had lapsed into the position of wealthy landowners. The work which in the early times they had so well performed, the civilization of the country districts, was over. They had become lazy and luxurious. The prelates had for the most part deserted their spiritual calling and become statesmen. The Church as a whole, as represented by the Pope, had misused its influence. Crusades had become the instruments of temporal aggrandizement, or of revenge upon the personal enemies of the Pope. A spiritual revival had been set on foot almost at the same time by St. Dominic and St. Francis d’Assisi, who had founded the two great orders of Dominicans and Franciscans, the Black and Grey Friars. The vow of poverty, evaded by the older orders, had become a reality. The establishments of the Friars had met with great success; thousands thronged to be enrolled in their orders. They had rapidly spread over Europe, and had lately arrived in England, and there begun their work of regeneration. They had laboured chiefly in the towns and among the most wretched outcasts of society, and had there called into life new religious energy, mingled with hatred towards their wealthy predecessors the old monks, and with a consciousness