terror into the Saracens, that they employed an assassin to murder him,
who wounded him in the arm, but perished in the attempt.[*] Meanwhile
his absence from England was attended with many of those pernicious
consequences which had been dreaded from it. The laws were not executed:
the barons oppressed the common people with impunity: they gave shelter
on their estates to bands of robbers, whom they employed in committing
ravages on the estates of their enemies: the populace of London returned
to their usual licentiousness: and the old king, unequal to the burden
of public affairs, called aloud for his gallant son to return,[**] and
to assist him in swaying that sceptre which was ready to drop from
his feeble and irresolute hands. At last, overcome by the cares of
government and the infirmities of age, he visibly declined, and he
expired at St. Edmondsbury in the sixty-fourth year of his age, and
fifty-sixth of his reign;[***] the longest reign that is to be met with
in the English annals.

* M. Paris, p. 678, 679. W. Heming, p. 520.

** Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 404.

*** Kymer, vol. i. p. 869. M. Paris, p. 678.

{1272.} His brother, the king of the Romans, (for he never attained the
title of emperor,) died about seven months before him.

The most obvious circumstance of Henry's character is his incapacity for
government, which rendered him as much a prisoner in the hands of his
own ministers and favorites, and as little at his own disposal, as when
detained a captive in the hands of his enemies. From this source, rather
than from insincerity or treachery, arose his negligence in observing
his promises; and he was too easily induced, for the sake of present
convenience, to sacrifice the lasting advantages arising from the trust
and confidence of his people. Hence too were derived his profusion to
favorites, his attachment to strangers, the variableness of his
conduct, his hasty resentments, and his sudden forgiveness and return of
affection.

Instead of reducing the dangerous power of his nobles, by obliging
them to observe the laws towards their inferiors, and setting them the
salutary example in his own government, he was seduced to imitate
their conduct, and to make his arbitrary will, or rather that of his
ministers, the rule of his actions. Instead of accommodating himself,
by a strict frugality, to the embarrassed situation in which his
revenue had been left by the military expeditions of hi