The history of these years is a series of national complaints and royal short-comings and evasions, diversified by occasional campaigns or splendid marriage ceremonies. In 1235 Henry married his sister Isabella to the Emperor Frederick II.; in 1236 he himself married Eleanor of Provence. Both marriages were the occasions of great outlay of money, which the nation was rapidly becoming more and more unwilling to pay. Nor was the discontent owing to taxation only. The queen’s relations poured into the country as into a newly discovered gold-field; dignities, territories, high office in Church and State were lavished upon them, and the rumor went abroad that they were attempting to change the constitution of the kingdom. Under their influence the old foreign agents who had flourished under the patronage of Peter des Roches returned into court and council, and brought with them the old abuses and the old jealousies in addition to the new. In 1238 the king gave his sister Eleanor, the widow of William Marshall the younger, to Simon de Montfort. The marriage and subsequent quarrel with Simon served to augment the jealousy and divisions at court. In 1242 Henry made a costly expedition to France, from which he returned in 1243; a new flood of strangers, this time the Poictevin sons and kinsfolk of his mother, followed him. In 1244 Earl Richard of Cornwall married the queen’s sister; and in 1245 Boniface of Savoy, the queen’s uncle, was consecrated to the see of Canterbury. [Sidenote: Constitutional grievances. ] Each of these years is marked by a struggle about taxation conducted in the assembly of barons and bishops, which from this time is known both in history and records by the name of PARLIAMENT. In these discussions the lead is taken sometimes by the bishops, sometimes by the barons; now it is the papal, now the royal demands that excite opposition. The charters are from time to time confirmed as a condition of a money grant; and as often as money is required they are found to need fresh confirmation. Up to the time of his marriage Earl Richard of Cornwall constantly appears among the remonstrants; Archbishop Edmund, as long as his patient endurance lasts, heads the opposition of the bishops; Robert Grosseteste, the Bishop of Lincoln, the great divine, scholar, and pastor of the Church, is not less distinguished as a leader in the plans propounded for the maintenance of good government and the diminution of the royal power of oppression. [Sidenote: Parliamentary discussions. ]