ng with the king against the barons. The Mortimers
were the most directly affected of all the Marchers by the successes
of Llywelyn, not only because their territories lay near Gwynedd, but
because nearly all their lands lay in or close to the Marches; they
had all their eggs in the same basket, while the other leading Lords
Marchers had large possessions elsewhere, from which they drew the
bulk of their revenues, using their March lands as a recruiting-ground
for their troops. Thus to the De Clares their estates in Kent were
probably worth more as a source of income than the whole of Glamorgan;
and they also had estates in Hertford and Suffolk and Hampshire, and
elsewhere; the Fitzalans were great landowners in Sussex; the Bohuns
of Hereford had broad acres in Huntingdon, Essex, and Hertford. To
these men the limitation of the royal powers--especially of the power
of taxing, and the king's right to employ foreigners in places of
trust--was more important than the checking of Llywelyn's advance,
which certainly weakened the king and made it easier to enforce
constitutional rights against him.

Still we have here one of the causes which broke the unity of the
baronage, which created a royalist party, and led to open war. This
has hardly been enough emphasised. It is generally said that the
question on which the barons split was the question of the recognition
of popular representation in the government of the country--the
question, in a word, of a House of Commons--Simon de Montfort being
the leader of the popular cause, Richard de Clare, Earl of Gloucester
(till his death in July, 1262), the leader of the oligarchic party,
which aimed merely at transferring the royal power to a committee of
barons. This was undoubtedly the most important cause of the quarrel,
because it was a question of principle big with results for the
future, affecting the whole course of English history, while the
attitude which the barons ought to take towards Llywelyn was merely
for the barons a matter of political tactics. But it is probable that
the latter loomed larger in the eyes of contemporaries--certainly in
the eyes of most of the Lords Marchers.

Hence it came about that, when war actually broke out in the spring of
1263, the elder of the Lords Marchers fought on the side of the
king--such as Roger Mortimer and Humphrey de Bohun--though the younger
men--young Gilbert of Gloucester and Humphrey de Bohun, the son of
Hereford--remained un