On April 2 the chief men of Church and State gathered together at London.  For more than a month the stormy debates went on.  The king’s demands were contemptuously waved aside.  His exceptional misdeeds, it was declared, were to be met by exceptional measures.  Hot words were spoken, and William of Valence called Leicester a traitor.  “No, no, William,” the earl replied, “I am not a traitor, nor the son of a traitor; your father and mine were men of a different stamp,” An opposition party formed itself under the Earls of Gloucester, Leicester, Hereford, and Norfolk.  Even the Savoyards partially fell away from the court, and a convocation of clergy at Merton, presided over by Archbishop Boniface, drew up canons in the spirit of Grosseteste.  In parliament all that Henry could get was a promise to adjourn the question of supply until a commission had drafted a programme of reform.  On May 2 Henry and his son Edward announced their acceptance of this proposal; parliament was forthwith prorogued, and the barons set to work to mature their scheme.

On June 11 the magnates once more assembled, this time at Oxford.  A summons to fight the Welsh gave them an excuse to appear attended with their followers in arms.  The royalist partisans nicknamed the gathering the Mad Parliament, but its proceedings were singularly business-like.  A petition of twenty-nine articles was presented, in which the abuses of the administration were laid bare in detail.  A commission of twenty-four was appointed who were to redress the grievances of the nation, and to draw up a new scheme of government.  According to the compact Henry himself selected half this body.  It was significant of the falling away of the mass of the ruling families from the monarchy, that six of Henry’s twelve commissioners were churchmen, four were aliens, three were his brothers, one his brother-in-law, one his nephew, one his wife’s uncle.  The only earls that accepted his nomination were the Poitevin adventurer, John du Plessis, Earl of Warwick, and John of Warenne, who was pledged to a royalist policy by his marriage to Henry’s half-sister, Alice of Lusignan.  The only bishops were, the queen’s uncle, Boniface of Canterbury, and Fulk Basset of London, the richest and noblest born of English prelates, who, though well meaning, was too weak in character for continued opposition.  Yet these two were the most independent names on Henry’s list.  The rest included the three Lusignan brothers, Guy, William, and Aymer, still eight years after his election only elect of Winchester; Henry of Almaine, the young son of the King of the Romans; the pluralist official John Mansel; the chancellor, Henry Wingham; the Dominican friar John of Darlington, distinguished as a biblical critic, the king’s confessor and the pope’s agent; and the Abbot of Westminster, an old man pledged by long years of dependence to do the will of the second founder of his house.  In strong contrast to these creatures of court favour