But all this royal patronage has left little mark on his work.

"The case," as Matthew says, "of historical writers is hard, for if they tell the truth they provoke men, and if they write what is false they offend God." With all the fulness of the school of court historians, such as Benedict and Hoveden, to which in form he belonged, Matthew Paris combines an independence and patriotism which is strange to their pages.

He denounces with the same unsparing energy the oppression of the Papacy and of the king.

His point of view is neither that of a courtier nor of a churchman but of an Englishman, and the new national tone of his chronicle is but the echo of a national sentiment which at last bound nobles and yeomen and churchmen together into a people resolute to wrest freedom from the Crown.
[Sidenote: Wales] The nation was outraged like the Church.

Two solemn confirmations of the Charter failed to bring about any compliance with its provisions.