king was in fact helpless, and resistance came only from
the foreign favourites, who refused to surrender the castles and honours
which had been granted to them. But the Twenty-four were resolute in their
action; and an armed demonstration of the barons drove the foreigners in
flight over sea. The whole royal power was now in fact in the hands of the
committees appointed by the Great Council. But the measures of the barons
showed little of the wisdom and energy which the country had hoped for. In
October 1259 the knighthood complained that the barons had done nothing but
seek their own advantage in the recent changes. This protest produced the
Provisions of Westminster, which gave protection to tenants against their
feudal lords, regulated legal procedure in the feudal courts, appointed
four knights in each shire to watch the justice of the sheriffs, and made
other temporary enactments for the furtherance of justice. But these
Provisions brought little fruit, and a tendency to mere feudal privilege
showed itself in an exemption of all nobles and prelates from attendance at
the Sheriff's courts. Their foreign policy was more vigorous and
successful. All further payment to Rome, whether secular or ecclesiastical,
was prohibited, formal notice was given to the Pope of England's withdrawal
from the Sicilian enterprise, peace put an end to the incursions of the
Welsh, and negotiations on the footing of a formal abandonment of the
king's claim to Normandy, Anjou, Maine, Touraine, and Poitou ended in
October 1259 in a peace with France.

[Sidenote: Simon and the Baronage]

This peace, the triumph of that English policy which had been struggling
ever since the days of Hubert de Burgh with the Continental policy of Henry
and his foreign advisers, was the work of the Earl of Leicester. The
revolution had doubtless been mainly Simon's doing. In the summer of 1258,
while the great change was going on, a thunderstorm drove the king as he
passed along the river to the house of the Bishop of Durham where the Earl
was then sojourning. Simon bade Henry take shelter with him and have no
fear of the storm. The king refused with petulant wit. "If I fear the
thunder, I fear you, Sir Earl, more than all the thunder in the world." But
Simon had probably small faith in the cumbrous system of government which
the Barons devised, and it was with reluctance that he was brought to swear
to the Provisions of Oxford which embodied it. With their h