A.D. 1265. THE POWER OP THE KING CURTAILED. the king's magnificence. Accordingly, in the forty-second year of this reign, the knights, and barons, and prelates assembled at Oxford, and issued public edicts, being attended by a powerful and very numerous company of armed men ; and by their joint deliberations, or, I might say, delirious ravings, published these orders :— That, " because the said kingdom of England required a very general reform of its constitution, the said king should appoint twelve persons out of the kingdom on his part, and the whole community of his subjects should appoint an equal number on theirs, who, being supported by the royal power, should undertake the care of the whole kingdom, and should provide for the perpetual annual election of the justiciaries, chancellors, treasurers, and other officers and ministers of the kingdom, and should cause the castles to be kept by them and their troops." And the fear of perpetual imprisonment compelled the aforesaid king and his eldest son to consent to this ordinance, threatening all rebels with capital punishment, without any respect to condition or rank, by a formal edict. And the aforesaid JEthelmar, bishop elect of Winchester, and William de Valence, the uterine brothers of the aforesaid king, and many others who resisted the first steps of the beginning of this faction, were ah expelled from the kingdom and banished ; and each and all of the rest of the prelates, earls, and barons, took their corporal oath to the faithful observance of this disloyal ordinance, and a sentence of excommunication was passed against all rebels by all the archbishops and bishops of the kingdom. Moreover, it is a fit subject for wonder, with what a face the conscript fathers, and the aged bishop of Worcester, and some other prelates, fathers, and judges of men's consciences, gave their voluntary consent to the subversion of the king's power, after they had taken their corporal oath to preserve his earthly honours to the aforesaid king and his heirs ; an oath which they kept very ill, by ordaining that neither he nor they should ever govern, but that they should be governed by others. For if the intolerable prodigality, or the deficiencies of the king himself, evidently required the attention of a guardian, still it is nowhere provided, by either divine or human laws, that where there is no actual vice or crime, the punishment shall pass on to his heirs. Let not the iniquity of the father attend the son. Let not punishment advance too far, so as to be a crime. And that we may return