removed by
death in 1253. But others of like stamp still remained, such as Adam
Marsh, the Franciscan mystic, whose election to the see of Ely was
quashed by the malevolence of the court; Eudes Rigaud, the famous
Archbishop of Rouen, and Walter of Cantilupe, Bishop of Worcester, who
formed a connecting link between the aristocracy and the Church.
Despite the ineffectiveness of the clerical opposition to the papacy,
the spirit of independence expressed in Grosseteste's protests had not
yet deserted the churchmen. Clerks had felt the pinch of the papal
exactions, had been bled to the uttermost to support the Sicilian
candidature, and had seen aliens and non-residents usurping their
revenues and their functions. More timid and less cohesive than the
barons, they had quicker brains, more ideas, deeper grievances, and
better means of reaching the masses. If resentment of the Sicilian
candidature was the spark that fired the train, the clerical opposition
showed the barons the method of successful resistance. The rejection of
Henry's demands for money in the assemblies of 1257 started the
movement that spread to the baronage in the parliaments of 1258. In the
two memorable gatherings of that year the discontent, which had
smouldered for a generation, at last burst into flame. In the next
chapter we shall see in what fashion the fire kindled.

The futility of the political history of the weary middle period of the
reign suggests, to those who make the history of the state the
criterion of every aspect of the national fortunes, a corresponding
barrenness and lack of interest in other aspects of national life. Yet
a remedy for Henry's misrule was only found because the age of
political retrogression was in all other fields of action an epoch of
unexampled progress. The years during which the strong centralised
government of the Angevin kings was breaking down under Henry's weak
rule were years which, to the historian of civilisation, are among the
most fruitful in our annals. In vivid contrast to the tale of misrule,
the historian can turn to the revival of religious and intellectual
life, the growing delight in ideas and knowledge, the consummation of
the best period of art, and the spread of a nobler civilisation which
make the middle portion of the thirteenth century the flowering time of
English medieval life. It is part of this strange contrast that Henry,
the obstacle to all political progress, was himself a chief support