In the month of February in the same year the King assembled a council at Oxford, and before all present he declared himself of legitimate age to be released from wardship, and to take the chief management of the kingly duties. And thus the former pupil and ward of William Marshal during his life, and after his death of Peter, Bishop of Winchester, now, by the advice of Hubert de Burgh, Justiciary of England, freed himself from all counsel and restraint of the said Bishop and his friends, who had formerly been, as it were, his schoolmasters, and dismissed them all from his Court and from all connection with him. At the same council, too, the said King annulled and cancelled the Charters of the Liberties of the Forests in all the counties of England, after they had been in practice throughout the whole of England for two years; and as a reason for this he alleged that the Charters had been granted, and the liberties written and signed, whilst he was under the care of a guardian, and had no power over his own body or his seal, and therefore, as it had been an unreasonable usurpation, it could no longer stand good. On this, a great murmur rose amongst the council, and all decided that the Justiciary was the author of this trouble; for he afterwards became so intimate with the King that all the other councillors of the kingdom were thought nothing of. Orders were then given to the religious men and others, who wished to enjoy their liberties, to renew their charters under the new seal of the King, as they knew that he held the old charters to be invalid; and for this renewal a tax was levied, not according to the means of each of them, but they were compelled to pay whatever the Justiciary determined on. ARTICLES OF ACCUSATION AGAINST HUBERT DE BURGH (1232). +Source.+--_State Trials_, vol. i., coll. 13-22. Articles of accusation against Hubert de Burgh: I. That his lord the King requires of him an account of all the revenue of the kingdom, for the fourteen years next following the death of King John his father, from which time he took upon him the keeping and management of the same, without any authority.... II. Concerning the collection of the whole fifteenth, which, according to the Great Council of the whole kingdom, ought to have been kept and held in deposit, so that no part of it should have been taken until the arrival at age of our lord the King, unless under the inspection of six Bishops and six Earls specially appointed for the purpose; nor so but for the defence of the kingdom; the amount of which was about 89,000 marks of silver.