For the election of this body, primarily, and for a more explicit statement of grievances, the Great Council was to meet again at Oxford on the 11th of June, 1258. When the Barons came, they appeared at the head of their retainers. The invasion of the Welsh was the plea; but the real danger was nearer home. They seized on the Cinque Ports; the unrenewed truce with France was the excuse; they remembered too vividly King John and his foreign mercenaries. They then presented their petition. This was directed to the redress of various abuses. ... To each and every clause the King gave his inevitable assent. One more remarkable encroachment was made upon the royal prerogative; the election in Parliament of a chief justiciar. ... The chief justiciar was the first officer of the Crown. He was not a mere chief justice, after the fashion of the present day, but the representative of the Crown in its high character of the fountain of justice. ... But the point upon which the barons laid the greatest stress, from the beginning to the end of their struggle, was the question of the employment of aliens. That the strongest castles and the fairest lands of England should be in the hands of foreigners, was an insult to the national spirit which no free people could fail to resent. ... England for the English, the great war cry of the barons, went home to the heart of the humblest. ... The great question of the constitution of Parliament was not heard at Oxford; it emerged into importance when the struggle grew fiercer, and the barons found it necessary to gather allies round them. ... One other measure completed the programme of the barons; namely, the appointment, already referred to, of a committee of twenty-four. ... It amounted to placing the crown under the control of a temporary Council of Regency [see OXFORD, PROVISIONS OF]. ... Part of the barons' work was simple enough. The justiciar was named, and the committee of twenty-four. To expel the foreigners was less easy. Simon de Montfort, himself an alien by birth, resigned the two castles which he held, and called upon the rest to follow. They simply refused. ... But the barons were in arms, and prepared to use them. The aliens, with their few English supporters, fled to Winchester, where the castle was in the hands of the foreign bishop Aymer. They were besieged, brought to terms, and exiled. The barons were now masters of the situation. ... Among the prerogatives of the crown which passed to the Oxford Commission not the least valuable, for the hold which it gave on the general government of the country, was the right to nominate the sheriffs. In 1261 the King, who had procured a Papal bull to abrogate the Provisions of Oxford, and an army of mercenaries to give the bull effect, proceeded to expel the sheriffs who had been placed in office by the barons. The