which followed Simon's return to England his whole attitude was reversed.
There was as yet no quarrel with the king: he followed him in a campaign
across the Channel, and shared in his defeat at Saintes. But he was a
friend of Grosseteste and a patron of the Friars, and became at last known
as a steady opponent of the misrule about him. When prelates and barons
chose twelve representatives to confer with Henry in 1244 Simon stood with
Earl Richard of Cornwall at the head of them. A definite plan of reform
disclosed his hand. The confirmation of the Charter was to be followed by
the election of Justiciar, Chancellor, Treasurer, in the Great Council. Nor
was this restoration of a responsible ministry enough; a perpetual Council
was to attend the king and devise further reforms. The plan broke against
Henry's resistance and a Papal prohibition; but from this time the Earl
took his stand in the front rank of the patriot leaders. The struggle of
the following years was chiefly with the exactions of the Papacy, and Simon
was one of the first to sign the protest which the Parliament in 1246
addressed to the court of Rome. He was present at the Lent Parliament of
1248, and we can hardly doubt that he shared in its bold rebuke of the
king's misrule and its renewed demand for the appointment of the higher
officers of state by the Council. It was probably a sense of the danger of
leaving at home such a centre of all efforts after reform that brought
Henry to send him in the autumn of 1248 as Seneschal of Gascony to save for
the Crown the last of its provinces over sea.


[Sidenote: Simon in Gascony]

Threatened by France and by Navarre without as well as by revolt within,
the loss of Gascony seemed close at hand; but in a few months the stern
rule of the new Seneschal had quelled every open foe within or without its
bounds. To bring the province to order proved a longer and a harder task.