The imprisonment too gave a shock to public feeling which thinned the Earl's ranks.

In the new Parliament which he called at the opening of 1265 the weakness of the patriotic party among the baronage was shown in the fact that only twenty-three earls and barons could be found to sit beside the hundred and twenty ecclesiastics.
[Sidenote: Summons of the Commons] But it was just this sense of his weakness which prompted the Earl to an act that has done more than any incident of this struggle to immortalize his name.

Had the strife been simply a strife for power between the king and the baronage the victory of either would have been equally fatal in its results.

The success of the one would have doomed England to a royal despotism, that of the other to a feudal aristocracy.

Fortunately for our freedom the English baronage had been brought too low by the policy of the kings to be able to withstand the crown single-handed.