him in public, while showing all possible favour to his opponents, and delaying the trial for nearly two months. Simon kept his temper admirably; he knew, indeed, that the English barons were on his side "they would by no means suffer so noble a man, and natural subject of the crown, to be imprisoned as a traitor at the pleasure of these aliens." At last he obtained a day for the public hearing of the case. The Gascons had put their complaints in writing; he answered them in the same way, point by point. He was charged with stirring up factions in the towns by siding unduly with one party for his own interest; ordering arbitrary arrests and punishments, and extorting arbitrary fines and ransoms; refusing trial to prisoners, even when ordered by the king; seizing and destroying castles, lands, and goods without reason and without compensation, or on false pretences, and committing sundry acts of violence, both in person and by -his deputies; interfering with the law and administration of the land, by drawing to his own cognisance as viceroy suits which ought to have been left to the local courts of towns or barons, and overawing the courts in general, all over Gascony; appointing bailiffs, vicars, provosts, &c., on lands which were lawfully exempt from such interference; exacting tallages from lands which of old right owed no such impost; overriding the privileges of certain towns as touching the swearing of fealty to the king or his lieutenant, the amount of military service due to him, and of purveyance due to his bailiffs, &c.; selling the office of bailiff to men who oppressed the people to such a degree that they were driven to leave the country; appointing to posts of authority persons who were, or had been, in treasonable correspondence with France. Some of the individual charges Simon utterly denied; in the majority of cases he acknowledged the fact, but gave it a wholly different colour. For some of his arbitrary acts he alleged provocations which, if his allegations were true, went far to justify them; others he asserted to have been not arbitrary at all, but done after due sentence from the local courts of justice; and he further pointed out, with perfect truth, that he had accepted the government not as a mere seneschal, but on the express understanding that he was to be in all things as the king himself, without appeal. His prohibition of the forcible seizure of goods for pledge, and of the maintenance of armed "companies," and his strict punishment of its infringement, he defended on the grounds that the former practice was "the beginning of all strife," that the "companies" were "nothing but packs of thieves," and that both regulations had been duly passed in a parliament at Dax. Against the other charges his defence practically came to this : that no system short of "thorough" was of any avail with these contemptuous cities and lawless robber-nobles, and that the chastisements which he had inflicted on them were less than they deserved. Orally, indeed, he summed it all up in one burst of scorn: "Your testimony against me is worthless, for you are all liars and traitors." Nevertheless, he offered either to settle the matter at once by ordeal of battle between some of the accusers and the witnesses whom he had brought over on his side, or to give security for submitting to its settlement by any method that might be agreed upon either in England or Gascony. The accusers, however, would agree to nothing; "if the king would not believe what they told him, he had only to send them safe home again." So to answer was virtually to throw up their own case, and the unanimous verdict of the council forced the king to declare Simon acquitted. The very next day, however, Henry picked a quarrel with Simon in open council. Simon reproached him for his ingratitude, and urged the fulfilment of the terms on which he had undertaken the Gascon vice-royalty; Henry retorted that he would keep no covenant with a traitor. "That word is a lie," burst out Simon, "and were you not my sovereign, an ill hour would it be for you in which you dared to utter it." Henry would have arrested him, but the magnates all took Simon's part, and separated them after a bitter altercation. A few days later Simon offered the king three alternatives: peace between himself and his accusers to be made at the king's discretion, and the earl then to return to Gascony and hold it for the king according to the terms of that pacification; if peace were refused by the other party, the king to furnish the earl with troops and arms, and the earl to return to Gascony and go on as before, fighting down rebellion and holding the land for the king by force; or the earl to resign his commission as viceroy, provided that the king indemnified him for his expenses and secured his honour from reproach, and the persons and lands of his adherents from the vengeance of the Gascons; and provided also "that the prelates, nobles, and counsellors gave their consent." Henry rejected all three propositions; instead, he proposed to reopen the case in Gascony as soon as he could go thither himself, and meanwhile to prolong the truce which had been arranged there till that period should arrive. The king's parting
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