ccepted as his successor.

[Illustration: East end of Westminster Abbey Church: begun by Henry
III. in 1245.]

[Illustration: Nave of Salisbury Cathedral Church, looking west. Date,
between 1240 and 1250.]

[Illustration: A king and labourers in the reign of Henry III.]

26. =General Progress of the Country.=--In spite of the turmoils of
Henry's reign the country made progress in many ways. Men busied
themselves with replacing the old round-arched churches by large and
more beautiful ones, in that Early English style of which Lincoln
Cathedral was the first example on a large scale. In =1220= it was
followed by Beverley Minster (see p. 189). The nave of Salisbury
Cathedral was begun in =1240= (see p. 206), and a new Westminster
Abbey grew piecemeal under Henry's own supervision during the greater
part of the reign (see p. 205). Mental activity accompanied material
activity. At Oxford there were reckoned 15,000 scholars. Most
remarkable was the new departure taken by Walter de Merton, Henry's
Chancellor. Hitherto each scholar had shifted for himself, lived where
he could, and been subjected to little or no discipline. In founding
Merton College, the first college which existed in the University,
Merton proposed not only to erect a building in which the lads who
studied might be boarded and placed under supervision, but to train
them with a view to learning for its own sake, and not to prepare them
for the priesthood. The eagerness to learn things difficult was
accompanied by a desire to increase popular knowledge. For the first
time since the Chronicle came to an end, which was soon after the
accession of Henry II., a book--Layamon's _Brut_--appeared in the
reign of John in the English language, and one at least of the songs
which witness to the interest of the people in the great struggle with
Henry III. was also written in the same language. Yet the great
achievement of the fifty-six years of Henry's reign was--to use the
language of the smith who refused to put fetters on the limbs of
Hubert de Burgh (see p. 188)--the giving of England back to the
English. In =1216= it was possible for Englishmen to prefer a
French-born Louis as their king to an Angevin John. In =1272= England
was indeed divided by class prejudices and conflicting interests, but
it was nationally one. The greatest grievance suffered from Henry III.
was his preference of foreigners over his own countrymen. In
resistance to foreigners Englishmen ha