"If the King can't do without us in war, he must listen to us in peace," they declared.

"And what sort of peace is this when the King is led astray by bad counsellors, and the land is filled with foreign tyrants who grind down native-born Englishmen ?" William of Rishanger, a contemporary writer, expressed the popular feeling in well-known verses: "The King that tries without advice to seek his country's weal Must often fail; he cannot know the wants and woes they feel.
The Parliament must tell the King how he may serve them best, And he must see their wants fulfilled and injuries redressed.
A King should seek his people's good and not his own sweet will.
Nor think himself a slave because men hold him back from ill." "The King's mistakes call for special treatment," said Richard, Earl of Gloucester.
SIMON OF MONTFORT, LEADER OF THE NATIONAL PARTY So that year a Parliament met in Oxford, in the Dominican Priory.

It was called the "Mad Parliament," because the barons all came to it fully armed, and civil war seemed imminent.

But Earl Simon and Richard of Gloucester carried the barons with them in demanding reform.

Henry was left without supporters, and civil war was put off for five years.
The work done at this Parliament of Oxford was an attempt to make the King abide loyally by the Great Charter; and the Provisions of Oxford, as they were called, set up a standing council of fifteen, by whom the King was to be guided, and ordered that Parliament was to meet three times a year: at Candlemas (February 2nd), on June 1st, and at Michaelmas.