But by this time the spirit of the laity was roused. Gilbert of Gloucester was dead, and the heads of the baronage were Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, the Marshall, and Humfrey Bohun Earl of Hereford, the Constable of England; men not of high character or of much patriotism, but of great power and spirit, and eager to take the opportunity of asserting their position, which the king’s measure for enforcing equal justice had threatened to shake. Bohun, too, had been imprisoned on account of the private war which he had carried on against Gloucester in 1288. Edward’s legal reforms had touched the baronage like every other class. A close inquiry into the title by which they held their estates and local jurisdictions--the commission, as it was called, of “quo warranto”--had alarmed them in 1278; then the Earl Warenne had boldly averred that his warrant was the sword by which his lands had been won, and by which he was prepared to defend them. They found too that, although the new legislation in some respects gave them a stronger hold on their vassals, that advantage was counterbalanced by the stronger hold which the king gained by it over themselves. They did not care to have too strong a king, or one who ruled them by ministers of his own choosing. When, then, early in 1297, Edward called for the whole military force of the kingdom to go abroad, part to follow him to Flanders to support his allies, and part to go to Gascony, they determined to thwart him. It was a moot question how far they were bound to foreign service at all; the king himself seemed to be asking them for a favor rather than a right. They knew that the clergy were hostile on account of the taxes, and the merchants on account of the wool; they would make the king feel their strength. Edward himself acted unwisely; he had become exasperated with the delay; he had lost his early and best counsellor, Robert Burnell, and had taken in his place Walter Langton, the treasurer, a faithful but unpopular and unscrupulous man, and he had conceived the notion, which was probably a true one, that the barons wished to embarrass him. The plea of necessity by which he tried to justify himself must also justify him with posterity. [Sidenote: Assembly of the barons at Salisbury. ] [Sidenote: Reconciliation of Edward and Archbishop Winchelsey. ]