Every class suffered under the absolute administration, but the citizens of London, and the Jews perhaps most heavily, as from them without any intermediate machinery the king contrived to wring money. Not slowly or gradually, but by great and rapid accumulations the heap of national grievances grew, and but for the want of a leader a forcible attempt at revolution must have occurred much sooner than it did. In 1237 the national council gave their money under express conditions, none of which were observed, as to the control and purpose of expenditure. In 1242 they presented to the king a long list of the exactions to which they had submitted out of their good-will to assist him, but from which no good had arisen. In 1244, when Henry had assembled the magnates in the refectory at Westminster and with his own mouth had asked for money, the two great estates present, lay and clerical, determined, after debating apart, to act in concert, and chose twelve representatives to make terms with the king. The twelve, of whom the chief were Richard of Cornwall and Simon de Montfort, demanded the confirmation of the charters and the election of a justiciar, chancellor, and treasurer; they broached even a plan for constitutional reform according to which a perpetual council was to be appointed to attend the king and secure the execution of reforms to be embodied in a new charter. Henry first resisted, then produced an order from the Pope; but the barons were unable to persevere in their designs. They refused, however, to make a large grant, and voted a sum which they could not legally object to pay, for the marriage of the king’s daughter. [Sidenote: Henry’s impolicy. ] The pages of the great historian, Matthew Paris, teem with details like this. Whether money were given or refused, the king went on asking for more; whether he met the national complaints with promise or with insult, the evils remained alike unredressed. No permanent ministers were appointed; the king nominated a clerk or a judge from time to time to despatch formal business, and every important transaction for which he himself was not personally competent was left to be settled at haphazard. Some good results followed; the country learned that the king was really dependent on the nation, although it failed to impress that lesson upon Henry himself; every year the machinery for assessing and collecting the taxes assumed more and more a representative character, and the forms as well as the spirit of a parliamentary constitution grew apace. But in the countless assemblies which were held during this part of the reign, it is not possible to trace any uniformity or even any tendency towards a system of representative government. The councils are more busy about their powers than about their constitution, and the representative machinery already in use for carrying out the executive part of the public business does not yet reach the region of legislative or supreme taxation. [Sidenote: