The English court had spent the Christmas of 1226 at Reading[1223] and thence moved on by way of Wallingford to Oxford.[1224] What took place there, before the festal gathering usual at the season broke up, is related by the King himself in a circular letter issued on the 21st January, 1227, to all the sheriffs of England: “Be it known to you that by the common counsel of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the bishops, abbots, earls, barons, and other our magnates and faithful men, we recently at Oxford provided that henceforth we will cause charters and confirmations to be made under our seal. And we therefore bid you without delay publicly proclaim and make known to all persons in your bailiwick who have, or claim to have, lands or tenements or liberties by grant or concession and confirmation of our ancestors the Kings of England, or by our precept, that they come to us without fail before the beginning of this approaching Lent of the eleventh year of our reign, to shew us by what warrant they have, or claim to have, those lands or tenements or liberties, as they desire to keep or to recover them. You are also to make known to all persons in your bailiwick, and cause to be publicly proclaimed, that whosoever shall desire to obtain at any time our charter or confirmation of lands, tenements, markets, liberties, or anything whatsoever, let them come to us before the same term, to ask for our charter or confirmation thereof.”[1225] Thus in the second week of January, 1227 {8–10 Jan.}, three months after the completion of Henry’s nineteenth year, the Great Council of the realm sanctioned his release from the one restriction which in 1223 the same authority had decided should still remain imposed for a while upon his exercise of regal power. In what manner and on whose initiative this step was taken we do not know. The only chronicler who even professes to give any account of the matter asserts that Henry “declared before all” the Council “that he was of legal age, and henceforth, being set free from wardship, would order the affairs of the Crown as a prince”; and that the announcement about charters caused a great commotion, for which the Justiciar was universally held responsible, as the instigator of the King’s action.[1226] But this writer’s account of that action, and of its accompanying circumstances, is too full of demonstrable confusions and inaccuracies to be worthy of confidence in any particular.[1227] The suggestion may very likely have come from Hubert; but we need not accept for truth the insinuation which Hubert’s enemies seem to have induced Henry to believe at a later time, that Hubert was actuated mainly by a desire to secure for himself a grant in perpetuity from the Crown.[1228] Nor was there in the King’s proposed action any thing from which the other members of the Council could fairly withhold their consent. At the close of a long minority following on a period of confusion and civil war, it was