A.D. 1265. THE EARL OE LEICESTER GOBS INTO FRANCE. 429 law of any kind, being enacted by common consent, and as such being lawful and indissoluble, and binding men while it is in force, may, if the wickedness of men increases, and if, therefore, it has a tendency to produce injurious effects, to attend, if the inclination of those who originally enacted it, or if the greater part of them be changed, or may even be entirely abolished, just as it is recorded, that Hezekiah very properly destroyed (when the people were led into error by it) that brazen serpent, which had formerly been lifted up in the desert to the salvation of the people, at the command of the Lord ; nevertheless, it seemed, good to the king and nobles before mentioned, who were afraid of blame where no blame was, to procure absolution from the oath which they had taken from the unerring wisdom of the supreme pontiff. But the aforesaid five, obstinately persisting in the wantonness which they had conceived, (crying out, " What we have written, we have written,") endeavoured to establish pragmatic sanctions of this kind, confirmed by their common consent and common oath, thinking that the force of an oath so taken, could not be dissolved by any consent to a contrary effect, and that the apostolic absolution was null and void, and making of their own deliberate purpose, like Herod, the oath to stand as a bond of iniquity to bind them to resist laws and canons, and to involve their consciences in schism and error, drawing with them, as a strengthener of their error, many false prophets, rapacious wolves in sheep's clothing, murmuring against the vicars of Christ, and against the anointed of the Lord, their own king, not as the Holy Spirit gave them utterance, but as their disdain of a superior power taught them abuse. But when, in process of time, they advanced to an enumeration of the provisions, and when, in consequence of the death of the earl of Gloucester, and of John, the son of Geoffrey, and of the arrival of the king of Germany, and of Peter of Savoy, the aforesaid king of England began to prevail over those who were rebelling against him, the aforesaid earl of Leicester, despairing of succeeding in his audacity, departed into the territories of France, and, in the meantime, the Burgundians, and French, and the inhabitants of Champagne, who had been banished by the provisions of Oxford, having been recalled into England, the king's eldest son honoured them above all bis friends in England, and entrusted them with the safe keeping of his castles, and committed to him the