In 1264, simmering tensions between Henry III and his barons reached boiling point. Henry’s brother-in-law Simon de Montfort assembled an army and captured Henry in battle near Lewes in Sussex. Simon then used his new-found powers to establish a governing council that for the first time included townspeople and not just noblemen and clergy among its members.

Simon de Montfort’s new council was the first step towards a permanent constitutional bridle on the power of the Crown. The precedent he set was taken further by Henry’s son Edward I, who in 1295 summoned a Parliament widely regarded as the formal beginning of the constitutional democracy so famously acclaimed by Abraham Lincoln six hundred years later.

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