under the royal administration; 2.  That a new high sheriff should be annually appointed for each county by the votes of the freeholders; 3.  That all sheriffs, and the treasurer, chancellor, and justiciary should annually give in their accounts; 4.  And that parliaments should meet thrice in the year, in the beginning of the months of February, June, and October.  They were, however, careful that these assemblies should consist entirely of their own partisans.  Under the pretext of exonerating the other members from the trouble and expense of such frequent journeys, twelve persons were appointed as representatives of the commonalty, that is, the whole body of earls, barons, and tenants of the Crown; and it was enacted that whatever these twelve should determine, in conjunction with the council of state, should be considered as the act of the whole body.

These innovations did not, however, pass without opposition.  Henry, the son of the King of the Romans, Aymar, Guy and William, half-brothers to the King, and the Earl of Warenne, members of the committee, though they were unable to prevent, considerably retarded, the measures of the reformers, and nourished in the friends of the monarch a spirit of resistance which might ultimately prove fatal to the projects of Leicester and his associates.  It was resolved to silence them by intimidation.  They were required to swear obedience to the ordinances of the majority of the members; proposals were made to resume all grants of the crown, from which the three brothers derived their support; and several charges of extortion and trespass were made in the king’s courts not only against them, but also against the fourth brother, Geoffrey de Valence.  Fearing for their liberty or lives, they all retired secretly from Oxford, and fled to Wolvesham, a castle belonging to Aymar, as bishop-elect of Winchester.  They were pursued and surrounded by the barons:  their offer to take the oath of submission was now refused; and of the conditions proposed to them the four brothers accepted as the most eligible, to leave the kingdom, taking with them six thousand marks, and trusting the remainder of their treasures and the rents of their lands to the honor of their adversaries.

Their departure broke the spirit of the dissidents.  John de Warenne and Prince Henry successively took the oath:  even Edward, the King’s eldest son, reluctantly followed their example, and was compelled to recall the grants which he had made to his uncles of revenues in Guienne, and to admit of four reformers as his council for the administration of that duchy.  To secure their triumph a royal order was published that all the lieges should swear to observe the ordinances of the council; and a letter was written to the Pope in the name of the parliament, complaining of the King’s brothers, soliciting the deposition of the Bishop of Winchester, and requesting the aid of a legate to cooeperate with them in the important task of reforming the state of the kingdom.