trary power.

While Pembroke, by renewing and confirming the great charter, gave so
much satisfaction and security to the nation in general, he also
applied himself successfully to individuals. He wrote letters, in the
king's name, to all the malecontent barons; in which he represented to
them, that, whatever jealousy and animosity they might have
entertained against the late king, a young prince, the lineal heir of
their ancient monarchs, had now succeeded to the throne, without
succeeding either to the resentments or principles of his predecessor:
that the desperate expedient, which they had employed of calling in a
foreign potentate, had, happily for them, as well as for the nation,
failed of entire success; and it was still in their power, by a speedy
return to their duty, to restore the independence of the kingdom, and
to secure that liberty for which they so zealously contended: that as
all past offences of the barons were now buried in oblivion, they
ought, on their part, to forget their complaints against their late
sovereign, who, if he had been anywise blameable in his conduct, had
left to his son the salutary warning, to avoid the paths which had led
to such fatal extremities; and that, having now obtained a charter for
their liberties, it was their interest to show, by their conduct, that
this acquisition was not incompatible with their allegiance, and that
the rights of king and people, so far from being hostile and opposite,
might mutually support and sustain each other [e].
[FN [e] Rymer, vol i. p. 25. Brady's App. No. 143.]

These considerations, enforced by the character of honour and
constancy which Pembroke had ever maintained, had a mighty influence
on the barons; and most of them began secretly to negotiate with him,
and many of them openly returned to their duty. The diffidence which
Lewis discovered of their fidelity forwarded this general propension
towards the king; and when the French prince refused the government of
the castle of Hertford to Robert Fitz-Walter, who had been so active
against the late king, and who claimed that fortress as his property,
they plainly saw that the English were excluded from every trust, and
that foreigners had engrossed all the confidence and affection of
their new sovereign [f]. The excommunication, too, denounced by the
legate against all the adherents of Lewis, failed not, in the turn
which men's dispositions had taken, to produce a mighty effect upon
th