+Source.+--_Roger of Wendover_, vol. ii., pp. 485-486. (Bohn's
Libraries.)
In the month of February in the same year the King assembled a council
at Oxford, and before all present he declared himself of legitimate age
to be released from wardship, and to take the chief management of the
kingly duties. And thus the former pupil and ward of William Marshal
during his life, and after his death of Peter, Bishop of Winchester,
now, by the advice of Hubert de Burgh, Justiciary of England, freed
himself from all counsel and restraint of the said Bishop and his
friends, who had formerly been, as it were, his schoolmasters, and
dismissed them all from his Court and from all connection with him. At
the same council, too, the said King annulled and cancelled the Charters
of the Liberties of the Forests in all the counties of England, after
they had been in practice throughout the whole of England for two years;
and as a reason for this he alleged that the Charters had been granted,
and the liberties written and signed, whilst he was under the care of a
guardian, and had no power over his own body or his seal, and therefore,
as it had been an unreasonable usurpation, it could no longer stand
good. On this, a great murmur rose amongst the council, and all decided
that the Justiciary was the author of this trouble; for he afterwards
became so intimate with the King that all the other councillors of the
kingdom were thought nothing of. Orders were then given to the religious
men and others, who wished to enjoy their liberties, to renew their
charters under the new seal of the King, as they knew that he held the
old charters to be invalid; and for this renewal a tax was levied, not
according to the means of each of them, but they were compelled to pay
whatever the Justiciary determined on.