Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 8.djvu/466

 364. THE CASTLE, AND ' THE PROVISIONS OF OXFOED.' the former convention were grounded on the Great Charter, and they resohitely determined to maintain them to the end of their hves, as equally conducive to the good of the King and the nation at large. Very soon after this memorable declaration, a contest ensued, fatal, in its immediate conse- quences, to the King's personal authority, b}" his defeat and capture at Lewes. He was still further humiliated by the treaty called the Mise of Lewes, and by the use made of its conditions. So that the royal prerogative was almost suspended, in the exercise of its proper functions, till after the Battle of Evesham. The prejudice of the age attributed his disasters to an ambiguous act of devotion he showed towards the relics of St. Frideswide, which, for five centuries, it had been forbidden for any monarch to approach ; but although he was not stricken with mortal blindness, like the Mercian Prince Algar, when he pursued the Saint into Oxford, there were man}" persons found who considered his misfortunes to have been sent as an act of Divine retribution for his indiscreet intrusion upon the sacred shrine. Yet in the dispassionate view we are now capable of taking of these transactions, in spite of the innovations, the rude overthrow of power, and its abuse, together with the bad faith of the King in subsequently resisting the Provisions he had accepted, the spirit of the articles themselves led the actors generally to take a wise and temperate estimate of the conduct of the two contending parties. The leading actors at this remark- able crisis were unconsciously preparing the way for popular representation, and for a full adoption of those principles which, in the next reign, modelled the frame of a British House of Commons. The King was, for the remainder of his life, obliged to use his undeserved success with a higher respect for the rights of his subjects, whilst a salutary dread affected thinking minds that the establishment of an aristo- cratical legislature was but a change of servitude, as fatal to the true interests of the people as were the exactions and oppression of the Crown. It is extremely difficult to pourtray these memorable events in a clear, and yet succinct manner. The whole of the con- stitutional questions of this long reign are perplexing in themselves, and our difficulties are increased by the want of official documents, so that we are often obliged to depend upon the doubtful testimony of a monkish historian. In a short