to pay a visit
to England, gave alarm to the ruling barons, who dreaded lest the
extensive influence and established authority of that prince would be
employed to restore the prerogatives of his family, and overturn their
plan of government.[**] They sent over the bishop of Worcester, who met
him at St. Omars; asked him, in the name of the barons, the reason of
his journey, and how long he intended to stay in England; and insisted
that, before he entered the kingdom he should swear to observe the
regulations established at Oxford. On Richard's refusal to take this
oath, they prepared to resist him as a public enemy; they fitted out a
fleet, assembled an army, and exciting the inveterate prejudices of
the people against foreigners, from whom they had suffered so many
oppressions, spread the report that Richard, attended by a number
of strangers, meant to restore by force the authority of his exiled
brothers, and to violate all the securities provided for public liberty.
The king of the Romans was at last obliged to submit to the terms
required of him. [***]

* Ann. Burt. p. 411.

** M. Paris, p. 661.

*** Ibid p. 661, 662. Chron. T. Wykes, p. 53.

But the barons, in proportion to their continuance in power, began
gradually to lose that popularity which had assisted them in obtaining
it; and men repined, that regulations, which were occasionally
established for the reformation of the state, were likely to become
perpetual, and to subvert entirely the ancient constitution. They were
apprehensive lest the power of the nobles, always oppressive, should now
exert itself without control, by removing the counterpoise of the crown;
and their fears were increased by some new edicts of the barons, which
were plainly calculated to procure to themselves an impunity in all
their violences. They appointed that the circuits of the itinerant
justices, the sole check on their arbitrary conduct, should be held only
once in seven years, and men easily saw that a remedy which returned
after such long intervals, against an oppressive power which was
perpetual, would prove totally insignificant and useless.[*] The cry
became loud in the nation, that the barons should finish their intended
regulations. The knights of the shires, who seem now to have been
pretty regularly assembled, and sometimes in a separate house,
made remonstrances against the slowness of their proceedings. They
represented that, though the king had per