three
earls, Leicester, Gloucester, and Norfolk, and all others, in general,
who concurred in the oppression and captivity of their sovereign [y].
Leicester menaced the legate with death, if he set foot within the
kingdom; but Guido, meeting in France the Bishops of Winchester,
London, and Worcester, who had been sent thither on a negotiation,
commanded them, under the penalty of ecclesiastical censures, to carry
his bull into England, and to publish it against the barons. When the
prelates arrived off the coast, they were boarded by the piratical
mariners of the cinque-ports, to whom probably they gave a hint of the
cargo which they brought along with them: the bull was torn and thrown
into the sea; which furnished the artful prelates with a plausible
excuse for not obeying the orders of the legate. Leicester appealed
from Guido to the pope in person; but before the ambassadors,
appointed to defend his cause, could reach Rome, the pope was dead;
and they found the legate himself, from whom they had appealed, seated
on the papal throne, by the name of Urban IV. That daring leader was
nowise dismayed with this incident; and as he found that a great part
of his popularity in England was founded on his opposition to the
court of Rome, which was now become odious, he persisted with the more
obstinacy in the prosecution of his measures.
[FN [y] Rymer, vol. i. p. 798. Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 373.]

[MN 1265. 20th Jan.] That he might both increase and turn to
advantage his popularity, Leicester summoned a new Parliament in
London, where he knew his power was uncontrollable; and he fixed this
assembly on a more democratical basis than any which had ever been
summoned since the foundation of the monarchy. Besides the barons of
his own party, and several ecclesiastics who were not immediate
tenants of the crown, he ordered returns to be made of two knights
from each shire, and what is more remarkable, of deputies from the
boroughs, an order of men which, in former ages, had always been
regarded as too mean to enjoy a place in the national councils [z].
[MN House of Commons.] This period is commonly esteemed the epoch of
the House of Commons in England; and it is certainly the first time
that historians speak of any representatives sent to Parliament by the
boroughs. In all the general accounts given in preceding times of
those assemblies, the prelates and barons only are mentioned as the
constituent members; and even i