was engendered. They comprehended now
why Abelard had claimed the "supremacy of reason over faith," and why
Italian poets smiled at dreams of "immortality." Then, too, the new
culture compelled respect for infidel and for Jew. Was it not from
their impious hands, that this new knowledge of the physical universe
had been received?

Roger Bacon drank deeply from these fountains, new and old, and
struggled like a giant to illumine the darkness of his time, by
systematizing all existing knowledge. His "Opus Majus" was intended to
bring these riches to the unlearned. But he died uncomprehended, and
it was reserved for later ages to give recognition to his stupendous
work, wrought in the twilight out of dimly comprehended truth.

Pursued by the dream of recovering the French Empire, lost by his
father, and of retracting the promises given in the Charter, Henry III.
spent his entire reign in conflict with the barons and the people, who
were {54} closely drawn together by the common danger and rallied to
the defence of their liberties under the leadership of Simon de
Montfort.

It was at the town of Oxford that the great council of barons and
bishops held its meetings. This council, which had long been called
"Parliament" (from _parler_), in the year 1265 became for the first
time a representative body, when Simon de Montfort summoned not alone
the lords and bishops--but two citizens from every city, and two
burghers from every borough. A Rubicon was passed when the merchant,
and the shopkeeper, sat for the first time with the noble and the
bishops in the great council. It was thirty years before the change
was fully effected, it being in the year 1295, a little more than 600
years ago, that the first true Parliament met. But the "House of
Lords" and the germ of the "House of Commons," existed in this assembly
at Oxford in 1265, and a government "of the people, for the people, by
the people," had commenced.

Edward I., the son and successor of Henry III., not only graciously
confirmed {55} the Great Charter, but added to its privileges. His
expulsion of the Jews, is the one dark blot on his reign.

He conquered North Wales, the stronghold where those Keltic Britons,
the Welsh, had always maintained a separate existence; and as a
recompense for their wounded feelings bestowed upon the heir to the
throne, the title "_Prince of Wales_."

Westminster Abbey was completed at this time and began to be the
resting-pl