journey, while Kotuz
was on the hunting-field alone, he begged for the gift of a Mongol
slave girl, and, taking his hand to kiss for the promised favor,
seized hold of it while his accomplices stabbed him from behind to
death. Beibars was forthwith saluted sultan, and entered Cairo with
the acclamations of the people, and with the same festive surroundings
as had been prepared for the reception of his murdered predecessor.

THE "MAD PARLIAMENT"

BEGINNING OF ENGLAND'S HOUSE OF COMMONS

A.D. 1258

JOHN LINGARD

With the loss of Normandy under King John, the barons of
Norman descent in England had become patriotic Englishmen.
They forced their monarch to sign the Magna Charta and thus
laid the foundation of English constitutional liberty.

John died in 1216 and was succeeded by his son Henry of
Winchester, a minor in his eleventh year. The celebrated
Hubert de Burgh, chief justiciar, soon became regent, and
reigned comparatively without control, even after the young
King attained his majority. But in 1232 Henry, being in need
of money, imprisoned the regent and compelled him to forfeit
the greater part of his estate.

After De Burgh's fall, King Henry III became his own master,
and was responsible for the measures of government, the wars
with foreign powers, the disputes with the Pope and with the
barons, during which the evolution of the English parliament
made important progress, chiefly through the efforts of
Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester.

One of the most important episodes of that evolution was the
"Mad Parliament"--derisively so called by the royal
partisans--at which the Provisions of Oxford, long
considered the rash innovations of an ambitious oligarchy,
were promulgated. Of this Mad Parliament it has been said,
"It would have been well for England if all parliaments had
been equally sane."

As to the opinion, repeatedly emphasized in the following
account, that De Montfort was false and ambitious, it is
well to remind the reader that other historians have looked
upon Earl Simon as a disinterested patriot of the highest
type.

It was Henry's misfortune to have inherited the antipathy of his
father to the charter of Runnymede, and to consider his barons as
enemies leagued in a conspiracy to deprive him of the legitimate
prerogatives of th