In the year 1236, Henry married Eleanor of Provence, with immense pomp and another coronation--a ceremony the frequent repetition of which in former times was a proof of the uncertainty of regal power, for the crown could not be very firm that so often required re-soldering. The king's marriage formed, perhaps, a reasonable excuse for placing an extra hod of cement between the monarch's poll and the hollow diadem. The marriage festivities were followed by the summoning of a Parliament at Merton, where Henry passed a series of statutes that became famous under the name of the Statutes of Merton; and where he also pocketed, in the shape of-subsidies, a considerable sum of money. [Illustration: 154] Eleanor, the new queen, brought with her to England a quantity of needy and seedy foreigners, most of whom were immediately promoted. One of her uncles, "named Boniface," says Matthew Paris, "from his extraordinary quantity of cheek," was raised to the see of Canterbury. She invited over from Provence a quantity of _demoiselles a marier_, whom she got off by palming them upon rich young nobles, of whom her husband held the wardship. The court was turned into a kind of matrimonial bazaar, where the wealthy scions of English aristocracy were hooked by the portionless but sometimes pretty spinsters of Provence. Nor was this all, for Isabella, the queen mother, sent over her four boys, Guy, William, Geoffrey, and Aymer, her sons, by the Count de la Marche, to be provided for. England was in fact regarded as an enormous common, upon which any foreign goose or jackass might be turned out to grass, provided he was patronised by a member of the reigning family. Henry, who was the victim of his poor relations, soon found himself short of cash, and he was obliged to get money in driblets from the Parliament, who never allowed him much at a time, and always exacted conditions which were invariably broken as soon as the cash was granted. Henry had been married about a year, when he had the coolness to ask the nation for the expenses of his wedding. The barons declared that they had never been consulted about the match, and that the king up to the last hour of his remaining a single man had acted with great duplicity. Finding it useless to command, he resorted to the old plan of humbug, and fell back upon his old friend Magna Charta, which he confirmed once more, for about the fifth or sixth time, and of course got the money he required. This great Bill of Rights was to him a sort of stereotyped bill of exchange, upon which he could always raise a sum of money by going through the formality of a fresh acceptance.