and the power of capital to make itself felt.  Capital was almost monopolised by Jews, Lombards, or Tuscans, and the fierce English hatred of the foreigner found a fresh expression in the persecution of the Hebrew money-lenders and in the increasing dislike felt for the alien bankers and merchants who throve at Englishmen’s expense.  The fact that so much of English trade with the continent was still in the hands of Germans, Frenchmen, and Italians made this feeling the more intense.  But there were limits even to the ill-will towards aliens.  The foreigner could make himself at home in England, and the rapid naturalisation of a Montfort in the higher walks of life is paralleled by the absorption into the civic community of many a Gascon or German merchant, like that Arnold Fitz Thedmar,[1] a Bremen trader’s son, who became alderman of London and probably chronicler of its history.  Yet even the greatest English towns did not become strong enough to cut themselves off from the general life of the people.  They were rather a new element in that rich and purposeful nation that had so long been enduring the rule of Henry of Winchester.  The national energy spurned the feebleness of the court, and the time was at hand when the nation, through its natural leaders, was to overthrow the wretched system of misgovernment under which it had suffered.  Political retrogression was no longer to bar national progress.

[1] See for Arnold the Chronica majorum et vicecomitum Londoniarum in Liber de antiquis legibus, and Riley’s introduction to his translation of Chronicles of the Mayors and Sheriffs of London (1863).

CHAPTER V.

THE BARONS’ WAR.

During the early months of 1258, the aliens ruled the king and realm, added estate to estate, and defied all attempts to dislodge them.  Papal agents traversed the country, extorting money from prelates and churches.  The Welsh, in secret relations with the lords of the march, threatened the borders, and made a confederacy with the Scots.  The French were hostile, and the barons disunited, without leaders, and helpless.  A wretched harvest made corn scarce and dear.  A wild winter, followed by a long late frost, cut off the lambs and destroyed the farmers’ hopes for the summer.  A murrain of cattle followed, and the poor were dying of hunger and pestilence.  Henry III. was in almost as bad a plight as his people.  He had utterly failed to subdue Llewelyn.  A papal agent threatened him with excommunication and the resumption of the grant of Sicily.  He could not control his foreign kinsfolk, and the rivalry of Savoyards and Poitevins added a new element of turmoil to the distracted relations of the magnates.  His son had been forced to pawn his best estates to William of Valence, and the royal exchequer was absolutely empty.  Money must be had at all risks, and the only way to get it was to assemble the magnates.