The Mad Parliament: The Day Barons Cornered a King — Oxford, England, 1258

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Here's the full package for Episode 23: The Mad Parliament: The Day Barons Cornered a King — Oxford, England, 1258 In June of 1258, a group of English barons rode into Oxford wearing armor, surrounded their king, and forced him to accept something no English monarch had ever accepted before: that he could not govern without their permission. Henry III needed money. The barons had it. The price was a document called the Provisions of Oxford — a set of constitutional reforms that stripped the crown of its personal authority and distributed it among a council of fifteen barons who would supervise his ministers, control his treasury, and oversee the administration of his kingdom. Parliament would meet three times a year to monitor them. The king had been cornered, outmaneuvered, and systematically dismantled in a single afternoon. Henry's supporters called it the Parliamentum Insanum. The Mad Parliament. Host Shawn Spainhour takes you into the full story: the financial disasters and foreign favorites that had made Henry III one of the most resented kings in English history, the French-born baron Simon de Montfort who led the reform faction against his own brother-in-law, and the s