The benefits that resulted from this royal pre-eminence were, it must be confessed, often counter-balanced and sometimes outweighed by corresponding disadvantages--good kings were rare--the hand of a king who was inclined to oppress his people became the more grievous by reason of his police supremacy--whilst under a weak king the burden of oppression grew intolerable on account of the numberless oppressors who immediately arose to take advantage of his supineness. The reign of Henry III., externally brilliant, internally miserable, is a case in point; for fifty-six long years peace gave place to chaos--the king robbed, and the barons plundered, whenever and whomsoever they could--shoals of needy foreigners invaded England--the clergy swindled their congregations first on one pretext then on another, and remitted the bulk of their spoil to the pope's nominees in far-off Italy--"crimes," we are told, "escaped with impunity because the ministers themselves were in confederacy with the robbers." Men had cause to be dissatisfied and an excuse for taking the law into their own hands, with the result that violence from above was answered by violence from below. The lawlessness which followed took several forms and infected all classes of the community--the half-starved peasantry, hitherto patient, now scoured the country, and regained by force a portion of the spoil amassed at their expense by foreigners and others who had traded on the ignorant superstitions of the native English. The outbreak which at first was directed against the Italian clergy soon degenerated into a general campaign of license, until, as we learn, "men were never secure in their houses, and whole villages were often plundered by bands of robbers."[26] The king adopted a capricious policy of repression, but his action, never vigorous, came too late to be effectual, and failed to pacify the disturbed districts. The obvious, if still unconfessed, inability of Henry III. to cope with the disorders which infested the realm served as a pretext to the barons to usurp the royal functions of peace-maintenance, and keeping the king a virtual prisoner in their hands, they caused the so-called Mad Parliament holden at Oxford in 1258 to create a Committee of Reform armed with authority to formulate new regulations for the preservation of the peace. This committee appointed that four knights should be chosen by the freeholders of each county with power to inquire into and present to Parliament the police shortcomings of their respective shires, enacting as a further safeguard that the freeholders concerned should annually elect a new sheriff, and that the sheriff should be called upon to render to Parliament an account of his stewardship on relinquishing office.