So, in every sense of the word, the Abbey is the church of the nation, built with the gold of the people. And there is another striking fact to remember. Gradually the clear-headed and patriotic among the Barons were beginning to realise that though they had made the king swear to observe the Great Charter, they had no power of putting into laws which had to be observed the different provisions of that Charter; and though Henry was neither cruel nor tyrannical by nature, as his father had been, he was weak, impulsive, changeable, and extravagant. His idea of power lay in the carrying out of his magnificent ideas at Westminster, regardless of the cost, till, says Matthew of Paris severely, "Oh shame! his folly, by frequent repetition, came to be looked on as a matter of course." This is not the place to tell you at length how one of the barons, Simon de Montfort by name, fought the good fight by means of which the Charter became a living power in the land; you must read of him in other books, and learn how he came to be called the father of English Parliaments. What I want you to remember now is that it was he who determined to check the unjust taxation which was being imposed by Henry in his efforts to raise the money for the building of the Abbey. "Let the king," he said, "call together the barons and citizens, and let him tell them how much money it is that he wants, and what he wants it for, and then it will be for the barons and people to say how much money they will give, and how it shall be collected. If the king asks what is right and just, then what he asks will be given to him." There was only one way by which king and people could thus come face to face—Henry must summon to Westminster a Parliament to discuss those matters with him, and it must be a Parliament not made up of bishops and barons only; all England must be represented. So in the year 1265 the first real Parliament assembled at Westminster—twenty-three barons, a hundred and twenty churchmen, two knights from every county, and two burgesses from every town. To-day the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey stand side by side, a truly wondrous group of carved grey stone; but as you look at them, I want you to remember how it was through the building of the Abbey that the first Parliament which at all represented the people of England came into being.