THE POLITICAL SETTING AND THE SURVIVING EVIDENCE

Although Henry III faced mounting opposition from January 1263 onwards it was only in July of that year that he was forced to agree to the reinstatement of the regime of conciliar control of governmental machinery that had been created at Oxford in the summer of 1258, to the dismissal of the current royal appointees to the posts of chancellor, justiciar and treasurer and their replacement by new baronial appointees, and to a new measure for the expulsion from England of all aliens except for those whose continued residence was acceptable to the king's subjects. The new regime's hold on power was, however, no more than tenuous. By November the king had once more taken control of his administration and appointed his own candidates to the posts of chancellor, treasurer and chief justiciar. In January 1264 King Louis IX of France, to whom the differences between the king and his opponents had earlier been referred, provided a secular counterpart to the two prior papal condemnations of the Provisions of Oxford and all that followed from them in his pronouncement in the Mise of Amiens. The Mise, like the papal pronouncements, was not acceptable to Simon de Montfort or to other radical opponents of the king and civil war began in April 1264, culminating with baronial victory at the battle of Lewes in May 1264.