niface gathered an army in France for an invasion; Roger
Mortimer with the border barons was still in arms and only held in check by
Llewelyn. It was impossible to make binding terms with an imprisoned king,
yet to release Henry without terms was to renew the war. The imprisonment
too gave a shock to public feeling which thinned the Earl's ranks. In the
new Parliament which he called at the opening of 1265 the weakness of the
patriotic party among the baronage was shown in the fact that only
twenty-three earls and barons could be found to sit beside the hundred and
twenty ecclesiastics.

[Sidenote: Summons of the Commons]

But it was just this sense of his weakness which prompted the Earl to an
act that has done more than any incident of this struggle to immortalize
his name. Had the strife been simply a strife for power between the king
and the baronage the victory of either would have been equally fatal in its
results. The success of the one would have doomed England to a royal
despotism, that of the other to a feudal aristocracy. Fortunately for our
freedom the English baronage had been brought too low by the policy of the
kings to be able to withstand the crown single-handed. From the first
moment of the contest it had been forced to make its cause a national one.
The summons of two knights from each county, elected in its county court,
to a Parliament in 1254, even before the opening of the struggle, was a
recognition of the political weight of the country gentry which was
confirmed by the summons of four knights from every county to the
Parliament assembled after the battle of Lewes. The Provisions of Oxford,
in stipulating for attendance and counsel on the part of twelve delegates
of the "commonalty," gave the first indication of a yet wider appeal to the
people at large. But it was the weakness of his party among the baronage at
this great crisis which drove Earl Simon to a constitutional change of
mighty issue in our history. As before, he summoned two knights from every
county. But he created a new force in English politics when he summoned to
sit beside them two citizens from every borough. The attendance of
delegates from the towns had long been usual in the county courts when any
matter respecting their interests was in question; but it was the writ
issued by Earl Simon that first summoned the merchant and the trader to sit
beside the knight of the shire, the baron, and the bishop in the parliament
of the