On the day that followed his victory Leicester extorted from the captive
king the document called the "mise of Lewes," in which Henry promised to
abide by all the terms of the Provisions of Oxford, as well as to uphold
the Great Charter and the old customs of the realm. Montfort was
determined to put his master under political tutelage for the rest of
his life. He summoned a parliament, in which four knights elected by
each shire were present, to establish the new constitution. It appointed
Simon, with his closest allies, the young earl of Gloucester and the
bishop of Chichester, as electors who were to choose a privy council for
the king and to fill up all offices of state. The king was to exercise
no act of sovereignty save by the consent of the councillors, of whom
three were to follow his person wherever he went. This was a far simpler
constitution than that framed at Oxford in 1258, but it was even more
liable to criticism. For if the "Provisions" had established a
government by baronial committees, the parliament of 1264 created one
which was a mere party administration. For the victorious faction,
naturally but unwisely, took all power for themselves, and filled every
sheriffdom, castellany and judicial office with their own firm friends.
Simon's care to commit the commons to his cause by summoning them to his
parliament did not suffice to disguise the fact that the government
which he had set up was not representative of the whole nation. He
himself was too much like a dictator; even his own followers complained
that he was over-masterful, and the most important of them, the young
earl of Gloucester, was gradually estranged from him by finding his
requests often refused and his aims crossed by the old earl's action.
The new government lasted less than two years, and was slowly losing
prestige all the time. Its first failure was in the repression of the
surviving royalists. Isolated castles in several districts held out in
the king's name, and the whole March of Wales was never properly
subdued. When Simon turned the native Welsh prince Llewelyn against the
marcher barons, he gave great offence; he was accused of sacrificing
Englishmen to a foreign enemy. The new régime did not give England the
peace which it had promised; its enemies maintained that it did not even
give the good governance of which Simon had made so many promises. It
certainly appears that some of his followers, and notably his three
reckless sons, had given good cause for offence by high-handed and
selfish acts. Much indignation was provoked by the sight of the king
kept continually in ward by his privy councillors and treated with
systematic neglect; but the treatment of his son was even more resented.
Edward, though he had given little cause of offence, and had behaved
admirably in refusing to continue the civil war, was deprived of his
earldom of Chester, and put under the same restraint as his father.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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