ld appoint or discard at
pleasure every member of the supreme council.

But it was impossible that things could long remain in this strange
situation. It behoved Leicester either to descend with some peril
into the rank of a subject, or to mount up with no less into that of
a sovereign; and his ambition, unrestrained either by fear or by
principle, gave too much reason to suspect him of the latter intention.
Meanwhile he was exposed to anxiety from every quarter; and felt that
the smallest incident was capable of overturning that immense and
ill-cemented fabric which he had reared. The queen, whom her husband
had left abroad, had collected in foreign parts an army of desperate
adventurers, and had assembled a great number of ships, with a view of
invading the kingdom, and of bringing relief to her unfortunate family.
Lewis, detesting Leicester's usurpations and perjuries, and disgusted
at the English barons, who had refused to submit to his award, secretly
favored all her enterprises, and was generally believed to be making
preparations for the same purpose. An English army, by the pretended
authority of the captive king, was assembled on the sea-coast, to oppose
this projected invasion;[**] but Leicester owed his safety more to cross
winds, which long detained and at last dispersed and ruined the queen's
fleet, than to any resistance which, in their present situation, could
have been expected from the English.

* Rymer, vol. i. p. 793. Brady's Appeals, No. 213.

** Brady's Appeals, No. 216, 217. Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p
373 M. West, p. 385.

Leicester found himself better able to resist the spiritual thunders
which were levelled against him. The pope, still adhering to the king's
cause against the barons, despatched Cardinal Guido as his legate
into England, with orders to excommunicate by name the three earls,
Leicester, Glocester, and Norfolk, and all others in general, who
concurred in the oppression and captivity of their sovereign.[*]
Leicester menaced the legate with death if he set foot within the
kingdom; but Guido, meeting in France the bishops of Winchester, London,
and Worcester, who had been sent thither on a negotiation, commanded
them, under the penalty of ecclesiastical censures, to carry his bull
into England, and to publish it against the barons. When the prelates
arrived off the coast, they were boarded by the piratical mariners of
the cinque ports, to whom probably they gave a hint