But these Provisions brought little fruit, and a tendency to mere feudal privilege showed itself in an exemption of all nobles and prelates from attendance at the Sheriff's courts.

Their foreign policy was more vigorous and successful.

All further payment to Rome, whether secular or ecclesiastical, was prohibited, formal notice was given to the Pope of England's withdrawal from the Sicilian enterprise, peace put an end to the incursions of the Welsh, and negotiations on the footing of a formal abandonment of the king's claim to Normandy, Anjou, Maine, Touraine, and Poitou ended in October 1259 in a peace with France.
[Sidenote: Simon and the Baronage] This peace, the triumph of that English policy which had been struggling ever since the days of Hubert de Burgh with the Continental policy of Henry and his foreign advisers, was the work of the Earl of Leicester.

The revolution had doubtless been mainly Simon's doing.

In the summer of 1258, while the great change was going on, a thunderstorm drove the king as he passed along the river to the house of the Bishop of Durham where the Earl was then sojourning.