one cause of Henry’s difficulties at home, Henry’s treatment of him laid the foundation of a lasting enmity. The complaints of the Gascons against his severe administration were readily listened to, and Simon was easily convinced that his employment in France was a mere expedient for securing his ruin. In 1253 he resigned his command, and Henry for the third time went in person to France, where he stayed for a year and a half, returning at the end of 1254 more hopelessly in debt than ever. From this point the accumulating grievances of the nation, whether constitutional, religious, or political, blend in one mass; all the oppressed and offended make common cause. Extortion, faithlessness, improvidence, impotence at home and abroad, compel and suggest their own remedy; and every class having been insulted or oppressed, the time and the men for reform and revenge are not wanting. CHAPTER IX. SIMON DE MONTFORT. Delay of the crisis--Simon de Montfort--Parliament of 1258--Provisions of Oxford--Political troubles--Award of St. Lewis--Battle of Lewes--Baronial government--Battle of Evesham--Closing years. [Sidenote: Why the constitutional crisis was delayed. ] [Sidenote: Henry’s dynastic policy. ] The long and dreary survey of the first forty years of Henry’s reign has its chief use in enabling us to trace the string of events, the accumulation of causes and motives, which produced the more striking complications of the remaining sixteen years. We have seen that on the one hand a gradually increasing spirit of resistance was being roused among all classes of the people. Through a shifty, shuffling, purposeless public policy on the king’s part, a sullen determination to reign as despotically as his father had done constantly makes itself apparent. The papal influence, too, by which his foreign policy was guided, was gradually bringing him up to a point at which the national spirit would no longer endure him. We cannot fail to perceive further that Henry’s determination to act as his own minister could have but one result--that, when the time for account came, the account would be demanded of him himself personally; he would have no agents behind whom he could screen himself, or whom he could sacrifice to justify himself. Henry’s personal character, his pliancy and want of principle, may perhaps have helped to put off the day of account, so long delayed, and it may have been his own misfortune that he lived so long to try the patience of the people. Another reason for their endurance was no doubt the want of a leader, and that was a potent reason. In the early difficulties of the reign the place of the leader of constitutional opposition was occasionally taken by the Earl of Chester, a man in whose conduct the desire of rule was stronger than the love of liberty; and after his death it was occupied with higher principles and nobler purposes by the Earl Marshall Richard. After Richard’s death no great