13. =Growing Discontent. 1244--1254.=--The clergy had to learn by bitter experience that it was only by a close alliance with the barons that they could preserve themselves from wrong. In =1244= a new envoy from the Pope, Master Martin, travelled over England wringing money from the clergy. Though he was driven out of the country in =1245=, the Papal exactions did not cease. The Pope, moreover, continued to present his own nominees to English benefices, and in =1252= Grossetete complained that these nominees drew three times as much income from England as flowed into the royal exchequer. For a time even Henry made complaints, but in =1254= Innocent IV. won him over to his side. Frederick II. had died in =1250=, and his illegitimate son, Manfred, a tried warrior and an able ruler, had succeeded him as king of Sicily and Naples. Innocent could not bear that that crown should be worn by the son of the man whom he had hated bitterly, and offered it to Edmund, the second son of Henry III. Henry lept at the offer, hoping that England would bear the expense of the undertaking. England was, however, in no mood to comply. Henry had been squandering money for years. He had recently employed Earl Simon in Gascony, where Simon had put down the resistance of the nobles with a heavy hand. The Gascons complained to Henry, and Henry quarrelled with Simon more bitterly than before. In =1254= Henry crossed the sea to restore order in person. To meet his expenses he borrowed a vast sum of money, and this loan, which he expected England to meet, was the only result of the expedition. [Illustration: A bed in the reign of Henry III.] 14. =The Knights of the Shire in Parliament. 1254.=--During the king's absence the queen and Earl Richard, who were left as regents, and who had to collect money as best they might, gathered a Great Council, to which, for the first time, representative knights, four from each shire, were summoned. They were merely called on to report what amount of aid their constituents were willing to give, and the regents were doubtless little aware of the importance of the step which they were taking. It was only, to all appearances, an adaptation of the summons calling on the united jury to meet at St. Albans to assess the damages of the clergy in the reign of John. It might seem as if the regents had only summoned a united jury to give evidence of their constituents' readiness to grant certain sums of money. In reality the new scheme was sure to take root, because it held out a hope of getting rid of a constitutional difficulty which had hitherto proved insoluble--the difficulty, that is to say, of weakening the king's power to do evil without establishing baronial anarchy in its place. It was certain that the representatives of the freeholders in the counties would not use their influence for the destruction of order. [Illustration: Barn of thirteenth-century date at Raunds, Northamptonshire.]