So it is possible to argue that out of the evils and miseries of the wars this good did come, and that it might not have come but for these evils and miseries, because it was through them, or through the wars that caused them, that the needs of the king became so pressing. Henry III., succeeding the wretched John, gave his subjects further offence, besides that of the money which he made them subscribe for his wars, by the number of foreign counsellors and officials that he had about him. And the effect of this again was perhaps not altogether evil, for it helped the English people to a stronger idea that they were one nation--to a stronger idea of their national unity, as we say. While the kings were trying to be both English kings and French kings, the people grew more and more purely English. Because of Henry III.'s money difficulties, he had often to summon that Great Council which had grown out of the Anglo-Saxon "witanagemote" or "meeting of the wise men" of the nation. It began to be written of by its present name of "parliament," and exercised, as we have seen, one of the most important powers of parliament, namely, allowing the king to collect money from the people. And this very phrase, that it seems natural and right to use, "allowing the king," shows how the power of the king was already limited. It was very different in France; and it was largely because the French people had not been able to put any such check on their king's power that the horrors of the French Revolution had to happen. The English counties sent up representatives, chosen by themselves, to the Councils or Parliaments; and so government by the representatives of the people began. Charters for free trading and immunity from {183} certain taxes were granted by the king at these Councils, but he broke his word as readily as he gave it, and his barons soon came to open war against him. The barons had the better of the fighting. Twice they defeated him and extorted promises from him as a condition of letting him continue on the throne at all, but the last and deciding battle at Lewes, went in the king's favour. By that time he was perhaps softened by age. His terms were not severe and the last years of his long reign were the best. When he died in 1272 his son Edward, his heir, was on Crusade, and it was not until two years later that he returned. That no claimant to the throne came forward in that interval seems to show that the idea of hereditary succession to the throne was at length fully recognised. [Sidenote: First Prince of Wales]