l 2 the chief men of Church and State gathered together at
London. For more than a month the stormy debates went on. The king's
demands were contemptuously waved aside. His exceptional misdeeds, it
was declared, were to be met by exceptional measures. Hot words were
spoken, and William of Valence called Leicester a traitor. "No, no,
William," the earl replied, "I am not a traitor, nor the son of a
traitor; your father and mine were men of a different stamp," An
opposition party formed itself under the Earls of Gloucester,
Leicester, Hereford, and Norfolk. Even the Savoyards partially fell
away from the court, and a convocation of clergy at Merton, presided
over by Archbishop Boniface, drew up canons in the spirit of
Grosseteste. In parliament all that Henry could get was a promise to
adjourn the question of supply until a commission had drafted a
programme of reform. On May 2 Henry and his son Edward announced their
acceptance of this proposal; parliament was forthwith prorogued, and
the barons set to work to mature their scheme.

On June 11 the magnates once more assembled, this time at Oxford. A
summons to fight the Welsh gave them an excuse to appear attended with
their followers in arms. The royalist partisans nicknamed the gathering
the Mad Parliament, but its proceedings were singularly business-like.
A petition of twenty-nine articles was presented, in which the abuses
of the administration were laid bare in detail. A commission of
twenty-four was appointed who were to redress the grievances of the
nation, and to draw up a new scheme of government. According to the
compact Henry himself selected half this body. It was significant of
the falling away of the mass of the ruling families from the monarchy,
that six of Henry's twelve commissioners were churchmen, four were
aliens, three were his brothers, one his brother-in-law, one his
nephew, one his wife's uncle. The only earls that accepted his
nomination were the Poitevin adventurer, John du Plessis, Earl of
Warwick, and John of Warenne, who was pledged to a royalist policy by
his marriage to Henry's half-sister, Alice of Lusignan. The only
bishops were, the queen's uncle, Boniface of Canterbury, and Fulk
Basset of London, the richest and noblest born of English prelates,
who, though well meaning, was too weak in character for continued
opposition. Yet these two were the most independent names on Henry's
list. The rest included the three Lusignan brothers, Guy, W