Edward; Simon insisted that the pertinacious aliens should be again expelled. Twice if not three times in this year Henry was forced to confirm the Provisions; but Edward saw that they had now become a mere form under which the sovereignty of Simon de Montfort was scarcely hidden; and the increasing conviction of this induced the barons to refer the whole question to the arbitration of Lewis IX. of France. This was done on December 16, 1263. An examination of the names of the barons which appear in the two lists of sureties who undertake the carrying out of this arbitration, shows that Simon de Montfort had now lost some of his most important allies. The young Earl of Gloucester appears in neither list, but the Earls of Norfolk and Hereford, Hugh Bigot, and Roger Mortimer are now on the king’s side, and no earl except Leicester himself appears in the baronial party, the foremost layman there being Hugh le Despenser, the justiciar. There can be no doubt that since the outbreak of the war much moral weight had fallen to the royalists, and it seems most probable that Earl Simon had rather offended than propitiated the men who regarded themselves as his equals. The conduct of the barons after the award of Lewis IX. seems to place them in the wrong, and to show either that Simon de Montfort’s views had developed, under the late changes, in the direction of personal ambition and selfish ends, or that other causes were at work, of which we have no information. The barons were so distinctly justified in their first proceedings, that an equitable consideration cannot be refused to their later difficulties. Both parties, however, equally bound themselves to abide by the arbitration.