Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV FROM MONTFORT TO THE DESPENSERS The Earl of Leicester's character and influence—His successor found in his second son Simon—True character of the young Montforts—Clare of Gloucester, the renegade—His bitterness against the Montfort family baffled by the intervention of other royalists—Earl Simon's widow and her daily life as illustrations of fashionable life in the thirteenth century—Sic vos non vobis, as a motto for the Peers in this age—The victories of the Barons to be fully realised in the triumphs of the Commons—Leaders in the Lords under Edward I., Robert Burnell, Walter de Mer- ton, Archbishops Peckham and Winchelsea—How the spiritual lords rallied the temporal Peers and the nation round them against Edward I.'s efforts at dictatorship—Edward II., Thomas and Henry of Lancaster, and the Despensers—Life in the Lords during this period. DE CLARE, Earl of Gloucester, the only other candidate for the leadership, had died in July, 1262. From that date onwards Leicester had been the life and soul of the baronial party. Wyke's account of his credentials for the office reminds one, in its reluctant circumstantiality, of Clarendon's testimony to the qualifications of John Hampden or Pym for ascendancy over the House of Commons. " Forethought, circumspection, complete soldiership, abounding in excellent stratagems, not degenerate from itshigh ancestry and gifted with divine wisdom." Such were the properties which the royalist chronicler of the Middle Ages admitted Earl Simon to possess. Of Montfort's personal magnetism or his capacity to stamp his own idiosyncrasies upon the cause he took up, his entire career furnishes a continuous proof. From the Provisions of Oxford to the Battle of Evesham the policy of the nobles was his and his alone. The Mad Parliament of 12...