[Sidenote: Henry III., 1216-1272]

For the succeeding 56 years John's son, Henry III., was King of
England. While this vain, irresolute, ostentatious king was extorting
money for his ambitious designs and extravagant pleasures, and
struggling to get back the pledges given in the Great Charter, new and
higher forces, to which he gave no heed, were at work in his kingdom.

Paris at this time was the centre of a great intellectual revival,
brought about by the Crusades. We have seen that through the despised
Jew, at the time of the Conquest, a higher civilization was brought
into England. Along with his hoarded gold came knowledge and culture,
which he had obtained from the Saracen. Now, these germs had been
revived by direct contact with the sources of ancient knowledge in the
East during the Crusades; and while the long mental torpor of Europe
was rolling away like mist before the rising sun, England felt the
warmth of the same quickening rays, and Oxford took on a new life.

[Sidenote: Oxford in the Thirteenth Century.]

It was not the stately Oxford of to-day, but a rabble of roystering,
revelling youths, English, Welsh, and Scotch, who fiercely fought out
their fathers' feuds.

They were a turbulent mob, who gave advance opinion, as it were, upon
every ecclesiastical or political measure, by fighting it out on the
streets of their town, so that an outbreak at Oxford became a sort of
prelude to every great political movement.