The assistance given by some Londoners to Roger Mortimer, which made possible his escape abroad in 1323, highlights one of Edward's most intractable problems. He could never be sure of the allegiance of the greatest city of his kingdom. The problem of London had faced all the English kings in the thirteenth century. It was the rallying of London to the rebels that forced John to concede Magna Carta in June 1215. The Londoners saved Simon de Montfort from Henry III's forces in December 1263 and compelled the king to reach a compromise settlement with the Disinherited in 1267. Edward I, who had no use for autonomy in the capital cities of his kingdom and of his duchy of Gascony, tried to govern both London and Bordeaux through his own agents. The same man, Henry le Waleys, was used at different times in both these cities. In London direct rule by the king was imposed in 1285 and only the near revolution of 1297, when the Londoners again allied with the king's baronial opponents, ended what had been intended as a permanent abrogation of London's autonomy. Thereafter the city was perennially suspicious of royal intentions. The coherence of its ruling groups had been strengthened by the increase in the importance of the leading guilds. It had acquired a population so huge and clamorous, a small elite among its exceedingly wealthy and the great majority wretchedly insecure and poor, as to make it uncontrollable and permanently unreliable.