acquired, by insinuation and address, a strong
interest with the nation, and gained equally the affections of all
orders of men. He lost, however, the friendship of Henry from the usual
levity and fickleness of that prince; he was banished the court; he was
recalled; he was intrusted with the command of Guienne,[***] where he
did good service and acquired honor; he was again disgraced by the king,
and his banishment from court seemed now final and irrevocable. Henry
called him traiter to his face; Leicester gave him the lie, and told
him that, if he were not his sovereign, he would soon make him repent
of that insult. Yet was this quarrel accommodated, either from the good
nature or timidity of the king, and Leicester was again admitted into
some degree of favor and authority. But as this nobleman was become too
great to preserve an entire complaisance to Henry's humors, and to
act in subserviency to his other minions, he found more advantage in
cultivating his interest with the public, and in inflaming the general
discontents which prevailed against the administration. He filled every
place with complaints against the infringement of the Great Charter, the
acts of violence committed on the people, the combination between the
pope and the king in their tyranny and extortions, Henry's neglect of
his native subjects and barons; and though himself a foreigner, he was
more loud than any in representing the indignity of submitting to the
dominion of foreigners.

* M. Paris, p. 314.

** Ibid, p. 315.

*** Rymer, vol. i. p. 459, 513.

By his hypocritical pretensions to devotion he gained the favor of the
zealots and clergy: by his seeming concern for public good he acquired
the affections of the public: and besides the private friendships which
he had cultivated with the barons, his animosity against the favorites
created a union of interests between him and that powerful order.

A recent quarrel which broke out between Leicester and William de
Valence, Henry's half brother and chief favorite, brought matters to
extremity,[*] and determined the former to give full scope to his bold
and unbounded ambition, which the laws and the king's authority had
hitherto with difficulty restrained. He secretly called a meeting of
the most considerable barons, particularly Humphrey de Bohun, high
constable, Roger Bigod, earl mareschal, and the earls of Warwick and
Glocester; men who by their family and possessions stood