e disappointed. The alien invasion, checked for a
few years, was renewed in a more dangerous shape.

During the ten years after the collapse of Peter des Roches, swarms of
foreigners came to England, and spoiled the land with the king's entire
good-will. Henry's marriage brought many Provencals and Savoyards to
England. The renewed troubles between pope and emperor led to a renewal
of Roman interference in a more exacting form. The continued
intercourse with foreign states resulted in fresh opportunities of
alien influence. A new attempt on Poitou brought as its only result the
importation of the king's Poitevin kinsmen. The continued close
relationship between the English and the French baronage involved the
frequent claim of English estates and titles by men of alien birth.
Even such beneficial movements as the establishment of the mendicant
orders in England, and the cosmopolitan outlook of the increasingly
important academic class contributed to the spread of outlandish ideas.
As wave after wave of foreigners swept over England, Englishmen
involved them in a common condemnation. And all saw in the weakness of
the king the very source of their power.

The first great influx of foreigners followed directly from Henry's
marriage. For several years active negotiations had been going on to
secure him a suitable bride. There had also at various times been talk
of his selecting a wife from Brittany, Austria, Bohemia, or Scotland,
and in the spring of 1235 a serious negotiation for his marriage with
Joan, daughter and heiress of the Count of Ponthieu, only broke down
through the opposition of the French court. Henry then sought the hand
of Eleanor, a girl twelve years old, and the second of the four
daughters of Raymond Berengar IV., Count of Provence, and his wife
Beatrice, sister of Amadeus III., Count of Savoy. The marriage contract
was signed in October. Before that time Eleanor had left Provence under
the escort of her mother's brother, William, bishop-elect of Valence.
On her way she spent a long period with her elder sister Margaret, who
had been married to Louis IX. of France in 1234. On January 14, 1236,
she was married to Henry at Canterbury by Archbishop Edmund, and
crowned at Westminster on the following Sunday.

The new queen's kinsfolk quickly acquired an almost unbounded
ascendency over her weak husband. With the exception of the reigning
Count Amadeus of Savoy, her eight maternal uncles were somewhat
scan