Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/308

294 generally believed to be the case, although, for fear of the king, they did not dare openly to express the belief which they held in secret. Whatever degree of justice there may have been in the popular view of his character, his name was reverenced among the people for many years, under the named of Sir Simon the Righteous.



The victory of Evesham restored the king at once to his authority. He proceeded to Warwick, where his brother, the King of the Romans, had advanced to meet him, accompanied by many of the noble prisoners of Lewes, who now for the first time regained their liberty. Within a mouth afterwards a Parliament assembled at Winchester. The king was little more than a cipher among the company of his barons. He knew that by their arms his success had been won, and that he owed their support not to any desire for an absolute monarchy, but to a resistance to a power which seemed likely to exceed that of royalty itself. Henry, therefore, made no attempt to revoke the Great Charter; and widely different as his real sentiment and desires may have been, he assented to those measures of constitutional government which were laid before him But the Parliament of Winchester was not proof against personal animosities, and it passed heavy sentences against the family and some of the adherents of Leicester, at the same time depriving the citizens of London of their charter.

These were not the times in which such measures would be quietly submitted to. In every part of the kingdom some baron raised the standard of insurrection, and maintained a desultory warfare upon the troops and property