Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/532

 482 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE patron of the Church and art and learning. But his person- ality was weak, although well-meaning, and he fell too much under the influence of clever and greedy foreigners from Poitou, Provence, and Savoy, and asked for too many taxes. Moreover, during his reign the popes were constantl; calling upon the English clergy and people for contribution! to help them in their wars against the Hohenstaufen em- perors, and were selling offices in the English Church to for- eigners or giving them to members of influential Italian families whose aid the popes wished to secure. The king, too, often engaged in costly campaigns on the Continent in a vain effort to recover the fiefs which his father had lost. The Great Council became the chief organ of national opposition to Henry's misrule, as may be briefly illustrated Opposition by one °f * ts sessions in 1242 at London. On this by the Great occasion the nobility steadfastly refused to grant the king any taxes for a military expedition which he had planned on the Continent and in connection with which he had already contracted alliances. They went further and bitterly criticized his government. They wished to know what had become of previous grants of money which he had received from them ; they asked that the king consult first with them before committing himself to such perilous and expensive foreign expeditions. After a vain attempt to bring pressure to bear upon the individual mem- bers of the Council, Henry finally dismissed the assembly in anger, but without securing any financial aid. Thus it went until the king accepted the crown of Sicily at the hands of the pope for his second son, Edmund, — Provisions an undertaking which would benefit England °^ ford ' little even if it were successful, and which in- volved large expenditures for troops and pay- ments to the pope. The barons consequently lost patience, and in 1258 took the government out of Henry's hands and by the Provisions of Oxford appointed various committees from their own number to conduct the government and to reform the constitution. This arrangement did not work well, however, and the lesser nobility or knights wrote to