Henry was in greater financial difficulties than ever in 1257. The mad scheme of accepting the crown of Sicily for his second son Edmund from the pope, on condition that the cost of driving out Manfred, the Emperor Frederick’s son, undertaken by the pope, was to be paid for by England, had been adopted by Henry in spite of the opposition of bishops and nobles. Henry pledged his kingdom with the pope as security for the expenditure in Sicily,[41] and at last in the parliament of 1257 had to confess his indebtedness. Fourteen thousand marks were owing to Pope Alexander, and this wretched debt, in addition to the general contempt for law and justice by the king’s judges, sheriffs and foreign favourites, drove matters to a climax. The wet summer of 1257, followed by a failure at harvest, brought famine in the winter. The barons insisted that the time had come for constitutional amendment. “The king’s mistakes call for special treatment,” said Richard, Earl of Gloucester, at a parliament early in 1258, and Simon, closely related to the royal house as he was, agreed. The swarm of royal parasites from Poitou raised objections to any interference with Henry’s prerogative, but were swept aside. “If the king can’t do without us in war he must listen to us in peace. And what sort of peace is this when the king is led astray by bad counsellors and the land is filled with foreign tyrants who grind down native-born Englishmen?” So the barons argued.[42] To Henry’s threat, “I will send reapers and reap your fields for you,” Hugh Bigod of Norfolk had retorted briskly, “And I will send you back the heads of your reapers.” Parliament met again in June that year at Oxford--the “Mad Parliament” it was called--and the barons came fully armed, for civil war seemed imminent. But the barons led by Richard of Gloucester and Earl Simon carried all before them and the war was postponed for five years. The work of this parliament, well known as the Provisions of Oxford, was one more attempt to get the Great Charter honestly observed. Under this constitution:-- The king was to have a standing council of fifteen, by whose advice he was to act, and to whom the justiciar, chancellor and treasurer were to be accountable. Parliament was to meet three times a year--February, June and October. Four knights were to be chosen by the king’s lesser freehold tenant-knights in each county. To save expense twelve commissioners were to be chosen to represent the baronage--“and the commonalty shall hold as established that which these twelve shall do.”[43] The fifteen counsellors consisted of six of the king’s party, and nine of the barons’--the most conspicuous of the latter were Simon of Montfort, Richard of Gloucester, and Bishop Cantilupe, of Worcester.