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those parts, to the disinheritance of us and our heirs, against our will, which you ought by no means either to wish or permit, wherefore we send to command you that you suffer nothing to be done or attempted in such matters. On these and other concerns, give credence to what Master Edward de la Cnol', Dean of Wells, bearer of this present, shall say to you on our behalf. Witness the King at Windsor."

Another letter which the dean at the same time bare to Louis IX., in which Henry also urged him to refuse his consent, is more explanatory than the above vague allusions:

"It has lately become known to us that certain persons, contrary to conscience and to our will, propose to make or to procure a sale or alienation of our rights and possessions, established under your dominion, for which we have done homage to you, to the perpetual disinheritance of ourselves and our heirs."

There is no other evidence on the subject, but the tenor of the alarm expressed seems to point to an intention of the Queen to pledge or sell to France part of the English provinces in France, in order to raise supplies of men and money. Whether written with the privity of de Montfort or not, there seems no ground to justify any charge against him.

Another occurrence soon displayed again the activity of the defeated party. The hostage princes had been moved from Dover to Berkhampstead, and thence to the palace of Wallingford, which the King of the Romans had strengthened and embellished for his own residence. While there so slack a ward was kept upon them as to encourage the idea of their rescue, and about this time some of his devoted partisans at Bristol made a desperate attempt to effect it. Some of these knights were fugitives from Lewes, Hugh Turberville and Hamo l'Estrange, led by Robert Waleran and Warren de

1 He was dean from 1256 to 1284. "Windsor, Nov. 17, 1264.-Ry

mer.

3 Thomas de Turberville, a knight of Glamorganshire, having been ta

ken prisoner by the French in K. Edward's reign, was released on the promise to betray one of the Cinque Ports, but was detected and hanged.

R

Bassingburne'. Waleran was a knight of importance, holding twenty-five military fees, and much employed both as governor of castles and on foreign embassies. The barons confiscated his lands, but the King, for whom he fought at Evesham, rewarded him with grants of Hugh de Nevill's forfeited estate, and made him one of the four governors over London. Bassingburne was equally resolute and active: he had served in the Gascon wars, and had been one of the King's sureties in the mise. He too had grants of estates forfeited by the battle of Evesham, and was additionally rewarded by the pardon (1268) of his son Humphrey, who had sided with the barons. After a rapid march to Wallingford, these zealous knights surprised the garrison by a sudden attack at the dawn of day, They were obstinately resisted, however, and to their demand of releasing Prince Edward, the threat was returned that he should be fastened to a warlike engine, and so hurled off from the walls to the besiegers:

"That hii wolde Sir Edward vawe out to hom sende,

Ilithered with a mangonel home with hom to lede3."-ROB. GLOUC.

1 Of co. Cambridge.-Inq. post m.

1253,

2 Robert Waleran was Sheriff of Gloucester, ambassador in 1260, and Sheriff of Kent, 1263. [Castellan of Dover in 1261. Abbrev. Rot. Orig. 1. p. 17.] He restored some of de Nevill's lands, 1266, but only on condition of retaining Stoke Curcy and other feoda militum.Pat. 50 Hen. III. He was tried (47° H. III.) for opposing the Oxford Statutes and acquitted. He was at the battle of Evesham. He was the husband of the eldest co-heiress of Hugh de Kilpeck (descended from Wm. Fitz Norman, the lord of Kilpeck co. of Hereford in Domesday). Two years before his death, which was in 1272, having no heirs and being then old, Waleran gave the reversion of Kilpeck to his nephew Alan de Plokenet, whose son Alan made grants to Dore Abbey in 1319, and was buried there, on whose tomb is inscribed: "Ultimus Alanus de Plokenet hic tumulatur,

Nobilis urbanus vermibus esca datur." As he died unmarried, the estates passed to his sister Joan de Bohun. -Hist. of Kilpeck, by G. K. Lewis. 4to. 1842.

[Compare Foss's Judges of England, 11. pp. 503-505, and] Dugdale's Baronage.

3That they would fain send Sir Edward out to them, fastened with a mangonel to lead home with them." The mangonel (manga, manganum) was the most powerful engine in the wars of the middle ages, by which not only great stones, but even horses and men were thrown. "Obsides eorum machinis alligatos ad eorum tormenta, quæ mangas vulgo vocant, decrevit ojbiciendas.". Radivicus; Spelman's Gloss.

66

'Gyines he had of wonder wise Mangenelles of great quyentise." -Rom. of Richard Cœur de Lion; Warton's H. Poet.

"Warin de Basingeburne, familiaris Domini Edwardi, tenuit cas

The prince therefore came forward on the ramparts to entreat his friends to retire.

This gallant enterprise, though a failure, gave occasion to the removal of the hostages to the stronger castle of Kenilworth. The Countess of Leicester received her nephews there with all the courtesy of a hostess, and

"Wat she mighte dude hom of solas."-ROB. GLOUC.

It throws some light on the easy restraint in which the princes lived under her roof, and on the sincerity of de Montfort's wish for a pacific settlement, that three of the most formidable Royalists who remained in arms, Mortimer, Clifford, and Leybourne, were allowed to meet the King at Pershore', on December 12th, and are noticed as on their way, under a safe conduct, to Kenilworth, December 15, to hold a parley with Prince Edward, for the promotion of peace. We have no account of these dangerous interviews, but the subsequent events, the renewal of the war, and the escape of the Prince, may have been there concerted.

tellum de Benefeld, quia Dominus Winfridus prisonus erat." Chr. W. de Whittlesey, 1264, after taking of Northampton.

1 Rot. Pat.

2 "Qui certam formam pacis no:

biscum inierint; gressus suos versus Kenilworth duxerint ad loquendum cum Edwardo primogenito nostro et ad pacem plenius firmandam." The King's letter to the Marchers, from Worcester, Dec. 15, 1264.-Rymer.

CHAPTER XIII.

PARLIAMENT.

"What Prince soever can hit of this GREAT SECRET (of governing all by all), needs know no more for his safety and happiness, and that of the people he governs; for no state or government can ever be much troubled or endangered by any private factions, which is grounded upon the general consent and satisfaction of the subjects."

Sir W. Temple, Heroic Virtue.

ENGLAND was now at rest within itself; "domestic treason, foreign levy," having ceased to agitate it, it breathed once more in freedom', and the season seemed ripe for conciliating all classes of the community into one great brotherhood. By summons, dated from Worcester, Dec. 14, a Parliament was accordingly ordered to meet in London on the octave of St Hilary, Jan. 20, 1265. To this were invited twenty-five bishops, priors and deans, and on Dec. 24 were added eightythree more heads of monasteries, besides the barons, and two

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observed inviolably for ever. They are the same as the provisions in the Statute of Marlborough (52° Henry III.).

3 In aftertimes, out of 122 abbots, and 41 priors, who were occasionally summoned, only 25 abbots and 2 priors were constantly so. There was nothing unusual in the number of ecclesiastics summoned on this occasion.-V. Lingard. The Prior of Lewes, though now summoned, does not appear to have been so during the whole of Edward I.'s reign, nor until the beginning of Edward II.

representatives from each county'. The preamble in describing the occasion of meeting referred to the late serious disturbances, as then happily appeased, and required the advice of the prelates and barons, "in order to provide by wholesome deliberation for the security and completion of the peace, and for certain other business which the King was unwilling to settle without them." Of similar summons to all these parties there had been previous instances, but now for the first time the cities and towns were also required "each to choose and send two discreet, loyal, and honest men;" and this remarkable innovation seems, by the date from Woodstock, Dec. 24, later by ten days than the first summons, to have been an afterthought, the result of more mature deliberation.

"After a long controversy, almost all judicious enquirers seem to have acquiesced in admitting this origin of popular representation." Such is the remark of the highest authority3 on the subject, and it is more fitting to assent to this conclusion than to renew the discussion.

England had indeed been preceded by other nations in applying the representative system to towns. Aragon had

1 In 1254 the Queen and Regents summoned the tenants in chief to sail to the King's assistance, and "besides these two lawful and discreet knights should be chosen by the men of every county, in the place of all and each of them, to assemble at Westminster, and to determine, with the knights of the other counties, what aid they would grant to their Sovereign in his present necessity, so that the same knights might be able to answer in the matter of the said aid for their respective counties," p. 34.-[Report on the Dignity of a Peer, Appendix 1. p. 13.]

2 Rymer.

* Hallam, Mid. Ages, Vol. 1. As all the proceedings of de Montfort's Parliament were cancelled a few months afterwards by the Great Council at

Winchester, other dates have been adopted by writers for the commencement of Parliaments. In 1267 (52° Henry III.) the Statute of Marlborough, considered as the first regular Statute, was enacted by the "magnates, and discreet men as well of the higher as of the lower estate."-The Statute of Westminster in 1275 was sanctioned by the prelates, lords, "and all the commonalty of the realm." Hume points to the Parliament of Nov. 1295 as "the real and true epoch of the House of Commons." The summonses were directed to the nobles and prelates and knights as usual, and to the bailiffs of about 120 towns. The preamble is a noble acknowledgment of popular rights: "As the rule of justice teaches us that what concerns all should be by all approved,"

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