ounty;[**] that the sheriffs should have no power of fining
the barons who did not attend their courts, or the circuits of the
justiciaries; that no heirs should be committed to the wardship of
foreigners, and no castles intrusted to their custody; and that no new
warrens or forests should be created, nor the revenues of any counties
or hundreds be let to farm." Such were the regulations which the
twenty-four barons established at Oxford, for the redress of public
grievances.

* M. Paris, p. 657. Addit. p. 140. Ann. Burt, p, 412.

** Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 336.

But the earl of Leicester and his associates, having advanced so far
to satisfy the nation, instead of continuing in this popular course, or
granting the king that supply which they had promised him, immediately
provided for the extension and continuance of their own authority.
They roused anew the popular clamor which had long prevailed against
foreigners; and they fell with the utmost violence on the king's
half brothers, who were supposed to be the authors of, all national
grievances, and whom Henry had no longer any power to protect. The four
brothers, sensible of their danger, took to flight, with an intention of
making their escape out of the kingdom; they were eagerly pursued by the
barons; Aymer, one of the brothers, who had been elected to the see of
Winchester took shelter in his episcopal palace, and carried the others
along with him; they were surrounded in that place, and threatened to
be dragged out by force, and to be punished for their crimes and
misdemeanors; and the king, pleading the sacredness of an ecclesiastical
sanctuary, was glad to extricate them from this danger by banishing
them the kingdom. In this act of violence, as well as in the former
usurpations of the barons, the queen and her uncles were thought to
have secretly concurred; being jealous of the credit acquired by the
brothers, which, they found, had eclipsed and annihilated their own.

But the subsequent proceedings of the twenty-four barons were sufficient
to open the eyes of the nation, and to prove their intention of reducing
forever both the king and the people under the arbitrary power of a
very narrow aristocracy., which must at last have terminated either in
anarchy, or in a violent usurpation and tyranny. They pretended
that they had not yet digested all the regulations necessary for the
reformation of the state, and for the redress of grievances; and
th