The victory of Lewes placed Earl Simon at the head of the state. “Now England breathes in the hope of liberty,” sang a poet of the time; “the English were despised like dogs, but now they have lifted up their head and their foes are vanquished.” The song announces with almost legal precision the theory of the patriots. “He who would be in truth a king, he is a ‘free king’ indeed if he rightly rule himself and his realm. All things are lawful to him for the government of his kingdom, but nothing for its destruction. It is one thing to rule according to a king’s duty, another to destroy a kingdom by resisting the law.... Let the community of the realm advise, and let it be known what the generality, to whom their own laws are best known, think on the matter. They who are ruled by the laws know those laws best; they who make daily trial of them are best acquainted with them; and since it is their own affairs which are at stake, they will take more care, and will act with an eye to their own peace.... It concerns the community to see what sort of men ought justly to be chosen for the weal of the realm.” The constitutional restrictions on the royal authority, the right of the whole nation to deliberate and decide on its own affairs, and to have a voice in the selection of the administrators of government, had never been so clearly stated before. It was impossible to make binding terms with an imprisoned king, yet to release Henry without terms was to renew the war. A new Parliament was summoned in January, 1265, to Westminster, but the weakness of the patriotic party among the baronage was shown in the fact that only twenty-three earls and barons could be found to sit beside the hundred and twenty ecclesiastics. But it was just this sense of his weakness that drove Earl Simon to a constitutional change of mighty issue in our history. As before, he summoned two knights from every county. But he created a new force in English politics when he summoned to sit beside them two citizens from every borough. The attendance of delegates from the towns had long been usual in the county courts when any matter respecting their interests was in question; but it was the writ issued by Earl Simon that first summoned the merchant and the trader to sit beside the knight of the shire, the baron, and the bishop in the Parliament of the realm. EDWARD I, KING OF ENGLAND. BY JOHN RICHARD GREEN.