lay between them–the dowry of Eleanor. Then Henry accused Simon of quitting Paris without tafeing leave of him; coming to the parliament in defiance of his prohibition, and with horses and arms, which was also forbidden; procuring the removal of a member of the council without the king's know- ledge; "drawing people to him and making new alliances," thus disturbing the country and obliging the king to bring over a costly force of mercenaries; threatening that these mercenaries "should be so lodged that no others would ever care to follow them;" bidding the justiciar tell the king that the mercenaries should be shut out of the realm, and undertaking to uphold the justiciar in this defiance; forbidding the justiciar to send money to the king, and declaring that if it were sent the justiciar should be forced to refund it. The more frivolous of these charges Simon passed over with a scornful word "It might be so;" to the rest he answered that he had done and spoken nothing save for the public good and the royal honour, and with the knowledge and in the presence of the whole council. So "by God's grace," as the Dunstable annalist says, the attack ended in failure.
Simon was one of the tenants-in-chief summoned to meet the king at Chester on 8 Sept. for an expedition into Wales. One chronicler says that, as ' the wisest and stoutest warrior in England,' he was put in command of the host (Flores Histor. ii. 454) ; but this statement seems to have arisen out of a confusion between Simon and Peter. He was, however, absent from the wedding of the king's daughter Beatrice on 13 Oct., when he appointed his wife's nephew, Henry of Cornwall [q. v.], to act as seneschal in his stead. On 14 March 1261 he and Eleanor were in London, and joined with the king in submitting the money matters in dispute between them to the arbitration of the king and queen of France. On 18 July Simon, with five other barons, appealed to St. Louis for help in coming to terms with Henry. A month later Henry proclaimed his intention of appointing his own ministers, recalling his foreign favourites, and governing once more as he pleased. Simon, in conjunction with Gloucester and a few other barons who remained faithful to the "Provisions," answered the royal challenge by summoning three knights from every shire south of Trent to meet them at St. Albans on 21 Sept., ' to treat of the common affairs of the realm.' Henry issued a countersummons, bidding the knights come not to St. Albans, but to Windsor, where he purposed to hold, on the same day, a meeting with the barons to treat for peace. Before the day came Gloucester had "apostatized," and Simon, thinking the cause lost, had again withdrawn over sea, declaring he would rather die in exile than live in faithlessness. In his despair he talked of going to the Holy Land, but he only went to France ; and in December his consent was asked to a new scheme of arbitration between the barons and the king. His reply is unknown; but when asked to join in ratifying the agreement drawn up by the arbitrators at Whitsuntide 1262 he refused, and it fell through in consequence. Later in the year king and earl met at the French court, and Henry took occasion to mix up with the money question, on which alone Queen Margaret had to arbitrate, a variety of complaints about Simon's "ingratitude," and a recapitulation of the charges as to his proceedings in Gascony and in England, on which he had been tried and acquitted in 1252 and 1260. Simon briefly repeated his former defence, and nothing came of the affair.
In December Henry went home; Simon followed at the end of April (1263). Gloucester was dead, and the barons had secretly recalled their true leader. At the Whitsuntide parliament, having vainly petitioned for a new confirmation of the charters, they denounced the king as false to his oath, and proclaimed war upon all violators of the "Provisions." Simon was at once recognised as their captain, and took the command of a force which marched upon Hereford, and soon mastered the foreign interlopers in the west. At midsummer the Londoners were called upon, by a writ sealed with Simon's seal, to choose a side in the struggle. They chose that of the earl. About the same time the scholars whom Henry had recently expelled from Oxford were brought back under Simon's protection. On 16 June Henry had given the earl a safe-conduct for the purpose of negotiation ; on 29-30 June Simon was at Beading, whence the king of the Romans invited him to a conference at Lodden Bridge ; but he declined it, and went on to Guildford and thence to Dover. In July the king accepted his terms, and on the 15th Simon and the barons entered London. Simon went straight to the king and made him ratify his concessions, and the first step in their fulfilment, the appointment of a new treasurer, was taken "in Earl Simon's presence" at Westminster on 19 July.
On 26 Sept. king and earl met at Boulogne, by the invitation and in the presence of St. Louis. Once again the old charges were flung in Simon's face ; once again he answered them, to the French king's entire satisfaction. He was home again for the
