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end to the reign of utter lawlessness. A powerful party, too, was known to
exist in the royal camp which, hostile as it had shown itself to Earl
Simon, shared his love for English liberties, and the liberation of Richard
was sure to aid its efforts. At the head of this party stood the young Earl
of Gloucester, Gilbert of Clare, to whose action above all the Earl's
overthrow was due. And with Gilbert stood Edward himself. The passion for
law, the instinct of good government, which were to make his reign so
memorable in our history, had declared themselves from the first. He had
sided with the barons at the outset of their struggle with Henry; he had
striven to keep his father true to the Provisions of Oxford. It was only
when the figure of Earl Simon seemed to tower above that of Henry himself,
when the Crown seemed falling into bondage, that Edward passed to the royal
side; and now that the danger which he dreaded was over he returned to his
older attitude. In the first flush of victory, while the doom of Simon was
as yet unknown, Edward had stood alone in desiring his captivity against
the cry of the Marcher Lords for his blood. When all was done he wept over
the corpse of his cousin and playfellow, Henry de Montfort, and followed
the Earl's body to the tomb. But great as was Edward's position after the
victory of Evesham, his moderate counsels were as yet of little avail. His
efforts in fact were met by those of Henry's second son, Edmund, who had
received the lands and earldom of Earl Simon, and whom the dread of any
restoration of the house of De Montfort set at the head of the
ultra-royalists. Nor was any hope of moderation to be found in the
Parliament which met in September 1265. It met in the usual temper of a
restoration-Parliament to legalize the outrages of the previous month. The
prisoners who had been released from the dungeons of the barons poured into
Winchester to add fresh violence to the demands of the Marchers. The wives
of the captive loyalists and the widows of the slain were summoned to give
fresh impulse to the reaction. Their place of meeting added fuel to the
fiery passions of the throng, for Winchester was fresh from its pillage by
the younger Simon on his way to Kenilworth, and its stubborn loyalty must
have been fanned into a flame by the losses it had endured. In such an
assembly no voice of moderation could find a hearing. The four bishops who
favoured the national cause, the bishops of Lond