e often improbable, and never
consistent. But we know, from an infallible authority, the public
remonstrance to the council of Lyons, that the king's revenues were
below sixty thousand marks a year: his brother, therefore, could never
have been master of seven hundred thousand marks; especially as he did
not sell his estates in England, as we learn from the same author: and
we hear afterwards of his ordering all his woods to be cut, in order
to satisfy the rapacity of the German princes. His son succeeded to
the earldom of Cornwall, and his other revenues.]

[MN Discontents of the barons.]
The successful revolt of the nobility from King John, and their
imposing on him and his successors limitations of their royal power,
had made them feel their own weight and importance, had set a
dangerous precedent of resistance, and being followed by a long
minority, had impoverished as well as weakened that crown, which they
were at last induced, from the fear of worse consequences, to replace
on the head of young Henry. In the king's situation, either great
abilities and vigour were requisite to overawe the barons, or great
caution and reserve to give them no pretence for complaints; and it
must be confessed that this prince was possessed of neither of these
talents. He had not prudence to choose right measures; he wanted even
that constancy, which sometimes gives weight to wrong ones; he was
entirely devoted to his favourites, who were always foreigners; he
lavished on them, without discretion, his diminished revenue; and
finding that his barons indulged their disposition towards tyranny,
and observed not to their own vassals the same rules which they had
imposed on the crown, he was apt, in his administration, to neglect
all the salutary articles of the great charter, which he remarked to
be so little regarded by his nobility. This conduct had extremely
lessened his authority in the kingdom; had multiplied complaints
against him; and had frequently exposed him to affronts, and even to
dangerous attempts upon his prerogative. In the year 1244, when he
desired a supply from Parliament, the barons, complaining of the
frequent breaches of the great charter, and of the many fruitless
applications which they had formerly made for the redress of this and
other grievances, demanded, in return, that he should give them the
nomination of the great justiciary and of the chancellor, to whose
hands chiefly the administration of justice