None the less, he gives a more vivid impression of his, age than any other English chronicler; and it is a matter for regret that his great history breaks off in 1259, on the eve of the crowning struggle between Henry III and the baronage.
No alliance was actually formed between the king and the mesne nobility against the immediate baronage.
They preferred an unwritten law, as Prutz suggests, partly because it suited the barristers (who often belonged to the baronage, for the Frankish nobles were "great pleaders in court and out of court"), and partly because the high court was left unbound so long as there was no written code.
Raymund at once submitted to the pope, but the Crusade continued none the less, because, as Luchaire says," the baronage of the north and centre of France had finished their preparations,"and were resolved to annex the rich lands of the south.
During those fifteen years the kingdom of Jerusalem was agitated by a struggle between the native barons, championing the principle that sovereignty resided in the collective baronage, and taking their stand on the assizes, and Frederick II., claiming sovereignty for himself, and opposing to the assizes the feudal law of Sicily.