Franciscans lived and laboured, sharing in their misery and their
diseases, counting their lives well spent if they could bring comfort
to a single human soul.

[Footnote 13: A phrase which may serve to keep in mind the medieval
meaning of '_libertas_' is to be found in the statement that a
certain monastery kept up a pair of stocks '_pro libertate
servanda_'--that is to say, to keep up its franchise of putting
offenders into the stocks.]

8. =Monks and Friars.=--The work of the friars was a new phase in the
history of the Church. The monks had made it their object to save
their own souls; the friars made it their object to save the bodies
and souls of others. The friars, like the monks, taught by the example
of self-denial; but the friars added active well-doing to the passive
virtue of restraint. Such examples could not fail to be attended with
consequences of which those who set them never dreamed, all the more
because the two new orders worked harmoniously towards a common end.
The Dominicans quickened the brain whilst the Franciscans touched the
heart, and the whole nation was the better in consequence.

[Illustration: Longthorpe Manor House, Northampton; built about 1235.
Some of the larger windows are later.]

9. =The King's Marriage. 1236.=--In =1236= Henry married Eleanor, the
daughter of the Count of Provence. The immediate consequence was the
arrival of her four uncles with a stream of Provencals in their train.
Amongst these uncles William, Bishop-elect of Valence, took the lead.
Henry submitted his weak mind entirely to him, and distributed rank
and wealth to the Provencals with as much profusion as he had
distributed them to the Poitevins in the days of Peter des Roches. The
barons, led now by the king's brother, Richard of Cornwall,
remonstrated when they met in the Great Council, which was gradually
acquiring the right of granting fresh taxes, though all reference to
that right was dropped out of all editions of the Great Charter issued
in the reign of Henry. For some time they granted the money which
Henry continually asked for, coupling, however, with their grant the
demand that Henry should confirm the Charter. The king never refused
to confirm it. He had no difficulty in making promises, but he never
troubled himself to keep those which he had made.

[Illustration: A ship in the reign of Henry III.]

10. =The Early Career of Simon de Montfort. 1231--1243.=--Strangely
enoug