The trouble with the barons continued into the reign of Henry III; and in the year 1261 the autumn parliament was held at St Albans. Up to 1295 the shires alone sent representatives to parliament but in the session held at St Albans in that year the cities, boroughs, and chief towns were each permitted to elect two parliamentary burgesses. During the reign of Edward II the county was considerably involved in the affairs of Sir Piers de Gaveston, who spent much of his time at King’s Langley, where Edward had a palace, and where Gaveston was buried after his execution in 1312. During that year the papal envoy met the barons at St Albans with a view to the settlement of their differences with the king; and in July, 1321, the barons marched through that city on their way to London. During the fourteenth century the county suffered severely from plague; but in spite of this Edward III spent much time at Langley; and in 1361 the king and queen came to Berkhampstead to take leave of the Black Prince (to whom the castle had been given) previous to his departure for Aquitaine. In 1381, owing to exactions on the part of the king and the abbot of St Albans, there broke out the peasants’ revolt, in which Hertfordshire men took a large share. Indeed after the execution of Wat Tyler the king proposed to go himself to St Albans to punish the insurgents, but was persuaded to send a commission in his stead; although a short time later, after another riot, his majesty appeared in person in that city at the head of an armed force. With the bare mention that in the second year of his reign King Henry IV visited the abbey, we pass on to the Wars of the Roses, and especially the first battle of St Albans, which was fought in May, 1455. The Lancastrians, or royalists, held the main street of the city till the Yorkists, under the leadership of the Duke of Warwick, burst through the defences from the direction of Sopwell and cut the royalist position in half. In less than an hour they had the city in their own hands, after a great carnage, during which King Henry VI himself was wounded. In 1458 the king visited Berkhampstead with the object of quelling the strife, but to no purpose; and in February, 1461, the two factions again fought an engagement at St Albans, this time at Bernard’s Heath, to the northward of St Peter’s Church. This second battle of St Albans ended in a victory for the king. On 14th April, 1471, Edward defeated Warwick in the great battle of Barnet, on the south-east border of the county. [Illustration: The Staircase, Hatfield House]