Such was the man whom Henry III. had raised and trained to his own confusion; a brilliant, religious, enterprising, experienced man, who had cultivated popularity; and who, although a foreigner, an adventurer, a man descended from high feudal parentage, and an adept in all the lessons of feudal insubordination, had yet fitted himself to be a leader of the English baronage in a crusade against tyranny. Earl Simon’s greatness throws all the other actors into the shade, for Bishop Grosseteste, who if he had lived, would no doubt have taken a great place in the story, died in 1253; and of the other prelates, besides Archbishop Boniface, the only one of much personal eminence at the time, was Walter of Cantilupe, Bishop of Worcester. Of the barons, the most eminent were Richard de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, and William of Ferrers, the last Earl of Derby of that house which had been engaged in every conspiracy and intrigue since the days of Stephen. [Sidenote: Parliament of 1258. ] The struggle opens at the parliament held at Midlent at Westminster, in 1257, when the king presented his son Edmund to the barons as king of Sicily, and announced that he had pledged the kingdom to the Pope for 140,000 marks. He demanded an aid, a tenth of all church-revenue, and the income of all vacant benefices for five years The clergy remonstrated. The ears of all tingled, says the historian, and their hearts died within them, but he succeeded in obtaining 52,000 marks, and was encouraged to try again. This he did the next year, 1258, at a parliament held soon after Easter at London. This assembly met on April 9, and continued until May 5. Every one brought up his grievances; the king insisted on having money. The Pope had pledged himself to the merchants, Henry had pledged himself to the Pope; was all Christendom to be bankrupt? The barons listened with impatience; at last the time was come for reform, and the king was obliged to yield. On May 2 he consented that a parliament should be called at Oxford within a month after Whitsuntide, and that then and there a commission of twenty-four persons should be constituted, twelve members of the royal council already chosen and twelve elected by the barons; then if the barons would do their best to get the king out of his difficulties by a pecuniary aid, he would, with the advice of these twenty-four, draw up measures for the reform of the state of the kingdom, the royal household and the Church. It will be remembered that in 1215 the execution of the articles of Magna Carta was committed to twenty-five barons, with power to constrain the king to make the necessary reforms; in this case the arrangement is somewhat different, although the method of proceeding is not quite dissimilar, and both alike afforded precedents for that superseding of the royal authority by a commission of government which we find in the reigns of Edward II. and Richard II. [Sidenote: Parliament at Oxford. ]