realm.

[Sidenote: Simon's difficulties]

It is only this great event however which enables us to understand the
large and prescient nature of Earl Simon's designs. Hardly a few months had
passed away since the victory of Lewes when the burghers took their seats
at Westminster, yet his government was tottering to its fall. We know
little of the Parliament's acts. It seems to have chosen Simon as Justiciar
and to have provided for Edward's liberation, though he was still to live
under surveillance at Hereford and to surrender his earldom of Chester to
Simon, who was thus able to communicate with his Welsh allies. The Earl met
the dangers from without with complete success. In September 1264 a general
muster of the national forces on Barham Down and a contrary wind put an end
to the projects of invasion entertained by the mercenaries whom the queen
had collected in Flanders; the threats of France died away into
negotiations; the Papal Legate was forbidden to cross the Channel, and his
bulls of excommunication were flung into the sea. But the difficulties at
home grew more formidable every day. The restraint upon Henry and Edward
jarred against the national feeling of loyalty, and estranged the mass of
Englishmen who always side with the weak. Small as the patriotic party
among the barons had been from the first, it grew smaller as dissensions
broke out over the spoils of victory. The Earl's justice and resolve to
secure the public peace told heavily against him. John Giffard left him
because he refused to allow him to exact ransom from a prisoner, contrary
to the agreement made after Lewes. A greater danger opened when the young
Earl of Gloucester, though enriched with the estates of the foreigners,
held himself aloof from the Justiciar, and resented Leicester's prohibition
of a tournament, his naming the wardens of the royal castles by his own
authority, his holding Edward's fortresses on the Welsh marches by his own
garrisons.

[Sidenote: Edward and Gloucester]

Gloucester's later conduct proves the wisdom of Leicester's precautions. In
the spring Parliament of 1265 he openly charged the Earl with violating the
Mise of Lewes, with tyranny, and with aiming at the crown. Before its close
he withdrew to his own lands in the west and secretly allied himself with
Roger Mortimer and the Marcher Barons. Earl Simon soon followed him to the
west, taking with him the king and Edward. He moved along the Severn,
securing it