m 1216 to 1272, eldest son of King
John; succeeded to the throne at the age of nine; during his minority the
kingdom was wisely and faithfully served by the Earl of Pembroke and
Hubert de Burgh; when he came to years he proved himself a weak ruler,
and, according to Stubbs, his administration was "one long series of
impolitic and unprincipled acts"; with the elevation of Peter des Roches,
a native of Anjou, to the post of chief adviser, French interlopers soon
became predominant at the Court, and the recipients of large estates and
pensions, an injustice further stimulated by the king's marriage with
Eleanor of Provence; justice was prostituted, England humiliated under a
feeble foreign policy, and the country finally roused by infamous
exactions; Simon de Montfort, the king's own brother-in-law, became the
leader of the people and the champion of constitutional rights; by the
Provisions of Oxford, forced upon the king by Parliament assembled at
Oxford (1258), a wider and more frequent Parliamentary representation was
given to the people, and the king's power limited by a permanent council
of 15; as an issue of the Barons' War, which resulted in the defeat and
capture of the king at Lewes (1264), these provisions were still further
strengthened by the Mise of Lewes, and from this time may be dated the
birth of representative government in England as it now exists; in 1265
was summoned the first Parliament as at present constituted, of peers
temporal and spiritual, and representatives from counties, cities, and
boroughs; internal dissensions ceased with the victory of Prince Edward
over the barons at Eastham (1265), the popular leader De Montfort
perished on the field (1206-1272).

HENRY IV., king of England from 1399 to 1418, first of the
Lancastrian kings, son of John of Gaunt, and grandchild of Edward III.,
born at Bolingbroke, in Lincolnshire; Richard II.'s misrule and despotism
had damped the loyalty of his people, and when Henry came to England to
maintain his ducal rights he had little difficulty in deposing Richard,
and, with the consent of Parliament, in assuming the crown; this act of
usurpation--for Richard's true heir was Roger Mortimer, a descendant of
an older branch of the family--had two important results; it made Henry
more obsequious to the Parliamentary power which had placed him on the
throne, and it was the occasion of the bloody Wars of the Roses that were
to devastate the kingdom during the reigns