ns and the Cinque Ports, to form a Parliament in conjunction with
the nobles of the realm. This was not an altogether new thing in the
European world; we know that in the Cortes of Aragon, as early as the
12th century, by the side of the high nobility and the ecclesiastics
there appeared also the Hidalgos and the deputies of the Commons; and
Simon de Montfort might well be aware of this, since his father had
been in so many ways connected with Aragon. In England itself under
King John men had come very near it without however carrying it
through: not till afterwards did the innovation appear a real
necessity. In opposition to the one-sided power exercised by the
foreigners, nothing was so much insisted on in daily talk and in the
popular ballads as the propriety of calling the natives of the land to
counsel, since to them its laws were best known. This justifiable wish
met with adequate satisfaction now that the Commons were summoned; the
public feeling against the foreigners, on which Simon de Montfort
necessarily relied, thus found expression. The assembly which he
called together doubtless sympathised with his party views. As he
invited only those nobles to it who remained true to him (they were
not more than twenty-three in number), so he appears to have summoned
those only of the towns which adhered to him unconditionally. But the
arrangement involved more than was contemplated from his point of
view.

Amid the storms he had called forth Simon de Montfort perished: the
King was freed, the royal authority re-established. A new Papal legate
entered London in the full splendour of his office, Cardinal Ottoboni;
Guido having meanwhile himself obtained the tiara, and using every
means to subdue the unbending spirits, from which danger even to the
Church was dreaded.[40] Yet the old state of things was not restored:
neither the rule of foreigners, nor the absolute dependence on the
Papal policy. The later government of Henry III has a different
character from the earlier: the legate himself confirmed Magna Charta
in the shape finally accepted. It is not merely at the great national
festivals that we find representatives of the towns present, whom the
King has summoned; it is beyond a doubt that one of the most important
statutes of the time was passed with their consent.[41] Yet
regulations for the summons of representatives from the towns were as
little fixed by law as those for voting the taxes. It would by no
means h