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 ballast of the ships were armour and weapons, as haubergeons, helmets, spears, bows, arrows, cross-bows and darts, with great store of victuals. There lay also, without the havens, on the coasts, divers other ships of like form, mould and fashion. Those that were driven into the havens were stayed for a time by the bailiffs of the ports. But finally, when it could not be known what they were, nor from whence they came, they were licensed to depart, without loss or harm in body or goods."

Matthew Paris's account does not vary much from the above. That chronicler calls the vessels "ships of the barbarians." Southey supposes the vessels to have been Norwegian, but no northern Englishman of that day would have considered Norwegians in the light of barbarians, nor is it conceivable that, in a large northern port, there was no one who understood so much as a word of the Norwegian language, commercial relations with the Scandinavian countries being then well established. Probably the strangers may have come from the eastern shores of the Baltic. But the whole question remains mysterious and interesting.

The last years of Henry III. were embittered by civil disputes. The Mad Parliament of 1258, by compelling the acceptation of the Provisions of Oxford, practically substituted for the royal power a baronial oligarchy, with Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, a Frenchmen, at its head. When in January, 1259, Richard, King of the Romans, manifested an intention of coming to England, his well-known loyalty to his brother Henry suggested to the barons that he contemplated intervention, and they assembled a large fleet to obstruct him; but Richard at length took oath not to interfere. In the same year Henry crossed the Channel, and proceeded with his queen on a friendly visit to Paris, returning in April or May, 1260. During that visit, he surrendered his claims to Normandy and Anjou, and from that time forward omitted his title of Duke of Normandy and Anjou from his grants and letters patent.

In 1261, the king, by a coup d'état, recovered some of the power of which his barons had deprived him; and, the fleet of the Cinque Ports having been fitted out on behalf of the barons for the maintenance of their authority as against that of the Crown, Henry went in person to Dover, and, on May 2nd, took into his own hands the custody of the castle there, the custody of the Cinque Ports,