closed the conquest of the Norman, with the third
began the regular progress of constitutional liberty. The position of
the town, on the border between the England that remained to the
West-Saxon kings and the England that had become the "Danelagh" of their
northern assailants, had from the first pointed it out as the place
where a union between Dane and Englishman could best be brought about.
The first attempt was foiled by the savage treachery of AEthelred the
Unready. The death of Swegen and the return of Cnut to Denmark left an
opening for a reconciliation, and Englishmen and Danes gathered at
Oxford round the king. But all hope was foiled by the assassination of
the Lawmen of the Seven Danish Boroughs, Sigeferth and Morcar, who fell
at a banquet by the hand of the minister Eadric, while their followers
threw themselves into the tower of St. Frideswide and perished in the
flames that consumed it. The overthrow of the English monarchy avenged
the treason. But Cnut was of nobler stuff than AEthelred, and his
conquest of the realm was followed by the gathering of a new gemote at
Oxford to resume the work of reconciliation which Eadric had
interrupted. Englishman and Dane agreed to live together as one people
under Eadgar's Law, and the wise government of the King completed in the
long years of his reign the task of national fusion. The conquest of
William set two peoples a second time face to face upon the same soil,
and it was again at Oxford that by his solemn acceptance and
promulgation of the Charter of Henry I. in solemn parliament Stephen
closed the period of military tyranny, and began the union of Norman and
Englishman into a single people. These two great acts of national
reconciliation were fit preludes for the work of the famous assembly
which has received from its enemies the name of "the Mad Parliament." In
the June of 1258 the barons met at Oxford under earl Simon de Montfort
to commence the revolution to which we owe our national liberties.
Followed by long trains of men in arms and sworn together by pledges of
mutual fidelity, they wrested from Henry III. the great reforms which,
frustrated for the moment, have become the basis of our constitutional
system. On the "Provisions of Oxford" followed the regular
establishment of parliamentary representation and power, of a popular
and responsible ministry, of the principle of local self-government.

From parliaments and sieges, from Jew and castellan, it is t