Much less hopeful were the prospects of citizens whose lord was a religious house. The monasteries were rich, well acquainted with forms of law, and as trustees not justified in parting with their hereditary assets. Hitherto promoters of progress, the monks now began, to be regarded as a stumbling-block on the path towards freedom. And from this arose the smouldering hatred of the monasteries that underlies so much of the literature of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. During the great revolt of the villeins the monasteries and bishops’ palaces on the route of the insurgents were all burnt and sacked by the mob. At St. Albans, Cirencester, and even in the cinque port of Romney, the struggles of the townsfolk to burst their thraldom were endless and always futile. It was organised force in conflict with organised authority, and the result was that the latter prevailed. At Coventry the motto of the two contending bodies was _divide et impera_. The Merchant Guild became the Guild of the Holy Trinity and shared with the Corpus Christi Guild (of which the Prior and other Churchmen were members) all authority in the town, nominating the Mayor and all the important officials. Simon de Montfort, “the father of English liberty,” was the first to recognise the growing importance of the commercial middle classes by summoning two burgesses from each of the town boroughs to his Parliament in 1264, and their presence was treated as a matter of course in subsequent Parliaments, though they formed a comparatively insignificant factor. In the reign of Edward III, when the Knights of the Shire associated with them to form the future House of Commons, their growing wealth and ability to make terms with the King as a condition of granting supplies was recognised and a marked increase of parliamentary activity commenced. Their “petitions” became on the assent of the Crown Statutes of the Realm, and henceforward the Lower House was to initiate nearly all legislation.