and determined the former to give full scope to his
bold and unbounded ambition, which the laws and the king's authority
had hitherto with difficulty restrained. He secretly called a meeting
of the most considerable barons, particularly Humphrey de Bohun, high
constable, Roger Bigod, earl mareschal, and the Earls of Warwick and
Gloucester; men who by their family and possessions stood in the first
rank of the English nobility. He represented to this company the
necessity of reforming the state, and of putting the execution of the
laws into other hands than those which had hitherto appeared, from
repeated experience, so unfit for the charge with which they were
intrusted. He exaggerated the oppressions exercised against the lower
orders of the state, the violations of the barons' privileges, the
continued depredations made on the clergy; and in order to aggravate
the enormity of his conduct, he appealed to the great charter, which
Henry had so often ratified, and which was calculated to prevent for
ever the return of those intolerable grievances. He magnified the
generosity of their ancestors, who, at a great expense of blood, had
extorted that famous concession from the crown; but lamented their own
degeneracy, who allowed so important an advantage, once obtained, to
be wrested from them by a weak prince and by insolent strangers. And
he insisted, that the king's word, after so many submissions and
fruitless promises on his part, could no longer be relied on; and that
nothing but his absolute inability to violate national privileges
could henceforth ensure the regular observance of them.
[FN [u] M. Paris, p. 649.]

These topics, which were founded in truth, and suited so well to the
sentiments of the company, had the desired effect; and the barons
embraced a resolution of redressing the public grievances, by taking
into their own hands the administration of government. Henry having
summoned a Parliament, in expectation of receiving supplies for his
Sicilian project, the barons appeared in the hall, clad in complete
armour, and with their swords by their side: the king on his entry,
struck with the unusual appearance, asked them what was their purpose,
and whether they intended to make him their prisoner [w]: Roger Bigod
replied, in the name of the rest, that he was not their prisoner, but
their sovereign; that they even intended to grant him large supplies,
in order to fix his son on the throne of Sicily; that th