(1): Appointment of the twenty–five executors.

The members of the committee were to be, in the first instance, “elected” by the “barons.” Vacancies were to be filled by the method now known as “co–optation”: the committee, once appointed, would form a close corporation; no one uncongenial to the majority could gain admission—an arrangement with a thoroughly oligarchic flavour. The provision for supplying vacancies caused by death proves that the scheme was not to be temporary.

Writs, issued to the sheriffs on 19th June, command the enforcement of the oath to the twenty–five barons, but do not mention them by name. Matthew Paris supplies the omission, and though he does not disclose the source of his information, it is unlikely that so comprehensive a list could be entirely a work of the imagination. They occur in the following order, the earls of Hertford, Aumâle, Gloucester, Winchester, Hereford, Norfolk, and Oxford, William Marshall the younger, Robert fitz Walter the elder, Gilbert de Clare, Eustace de Vesci, Hugh Bigod, William of Mowbray, William Hardell (Mayor of London), William de Lanvalei, Robert de Ros, John de Lacy (Constable of Chester), Richard de Perci, John fitz Robert, William Mallet, Geoffrey de Say, Roger de Mumbezon, William of Huntingfield, Richard de Muntfitchet, and William of Albini. There are here no churchmen and no members of the moderate party whose names appear in the preamble. All except two, or at most three, were declared enemies of John. It was an oligarchy of disaffected Crown tenants, whose baronial homogeneity was only broken by the presence of the Mayor of London. Such a committee was not likely to use its powers to further other interests than its own.