ce, that he should name six Frenchmen, three
prelates and three noblemen; these six to choose two others of their
own country, and these two to choose one Englishman, who, in conjunction
with themselves, were to be invested by both parties with full powers
to make what regulations they thought proper for the settlement of the
kingdom. The prince and young Henry accordingly delivered themselves
into Leicester's hands, who sent them under a guard to Dover Castle.
Such are the terms of agreement, commonly called the Mise of Lewes, from
an obsolete French term of that meaning; for it appears that all the
gentry and nobility of England, who valued themselves on their Norman
extraction, and who disdained the language of their native country, made
familiar use of the French tongue till this period, and for some time
after.

Leicester had no sooner obtained this great advantage and gotten the
whole royal family in his power, than he openly violated every article
of the treaty, and acted as sole master, and even tyrant of the kingdom.
He still detained the king in effect a prisoner, and made use of that
prince's authority to purposes the most prejudicial to his interests,
and the most oppressive of his people.[**] He every where disarmed the
royalists, and kept all his own partisans in, a military posture:[***]
he observed the same partial conduct in the deliverance of the captives,
and even threw many of the royalists into prison, besides those who were
taken in the battle of Lewes; he carried the king from place to place,
and obliged all the royal castles, on pretence of Henry's commands, to
receive a governor and garrison of his own appointment.

* M. Paris, p. 671. Knyghton, p. 2451.

** Rymer, vol. i. p. 790, 791, etc.

*** Rymer, vol. i. p. 795. Brady's Appeals, No. 211, 212.
Chron. T. Wykes, p. 63.

All the officers of the crown and of the household were named by him,
and the whole authority, as well as arms of the state, was lodged in his
hands: he instituted in the counties a new kind of magistracy, endowed
with new and arbitrary powers, that of conservators of the peace;[*]
his avarice appeared bare-faced, and might induce us to question the
greatness of his ambition, at least the largeness of his mind, if we had
not reason to think that he intended to employ his acquisitions as the
instruments for attaining further power and grandeur. He seized the
estates of no less than eighteen barons as hi