CHAPTER XI.

[Illustration: 132.jpg JOHN]

JOHN.

{1199.} THE noble and free genius of the ancients, which made the

government of a single person be always regarded as a species of tyranny

and usurpation, and kept them from forming any conception of a legal and

regular monarchy, had rendered them entirely ignorant both of the rights

of primogeniture and a representation in succession; inventions so

necessary for preserving order in the lines of princes, for obviating

the evils of civil discord and of usurpation, and for begetting

moderation in that species of government, by giving security to the

ruling sovereign. These innovations arose from the feudal law; which,

first introducing the right of primogeniture, made such a distinction

between the families of he elder and younger brothers, that the son

of the former was thought entitled to succeed to his grandfather,

preferably to his uncles, though nearer allied to the deceased monarch.

But though this progress of ideas was natural, it was gradual. In

the age of which we treat, the practice of representation was indeed

introduced, but not thoroughly established; and the minds of men

fluctuated between opposite principles. Richard, when he entered on the

holy war, declared his nephew Arthur, duke of Brittany, his successor;

and by a formal deed he set aside, in his favor, the title of his

brother John, who was younger than Godfrey, the father of that

prince.[*]

[* Hoveden, p. 677.]

But John so little acquiesced in that destination that when he gained

the ascendant in the English ministry by expelling Longchamp, the

chancellor and great justiciary, he engaged all the English barons to

swear that they would maintain his right of succession; and Richard, on

his return, took no steps towards restoring or securing the order which

he had at first established. He was even careful, by his last will, to

declare his brother John heir to all his dominions; whether, that he now

thought Arthur, who was only twelve years of age, incapable of asserting

his claim against John’s faction, or was influenced by Eleanor, the

queen mother, who hated Constantia, mother of the young duke, and who

dreaded the credit which that princess would naturally acquire if her

son should mount the throne. The authority of a testament was great in

that age, even where the succession of a kingdom was concerned; and John

had reason to hope, that this title, joined to his plausible right

in other respects, would insure him the succession. But the idea of

representation seems to have made, at this time, greater progress in

France than in England; the barons of the transmarine provinces Anjou,

Maine, and Touraine, immediately declared in favor of Arthur’s title,

and applied for assistance to the French monarch as their superior lord.

Philip, who desired only an occasion to embarrass John, and dismember

his dominions, embraced the cause of the young duke of Brittany, took

him under his protection, and sent him to Paris to be educated along

with his own son Lewis. In this emergency, John hastened to establish

his authority in the chief members of the monarchy; and after sending

Eleanor into Poictou and Guienne, where her right was incontestable, and

was readily acknowledged, he hurried to Rouen, and having secured the

duchy of Normandy, he passed over, without loss of time, to England.

Hubert, archbishop of Canterbury, William Mareschal, earl of Strigul,

who also passes by the name of earl of Pembroke, and Geoffrey

Fitz-Peter, the justiciary, the three most favored ministers of the

late king, were already engaged on his side; and the submission or

acquiescence of all the other barons put him, without opposition, in

possession of the throne.

The king soon returned to France, in order to conduct the war against

Philip, and to recover the revolted provinces from his nephew Arthur.

The alliances which Richard had formed with the earl of Flanders, and

other potent French princes, though they had not been very effectual,

still subsisted, and enabled John to defend himself against all the

efforts of his enemy. In an action between the French and Flemings, the

elect bishop of Cambray was taken prisoner by the former; and when the

cardinal of Capua claimed his liberty, Philip, instead of complying,

reproached him with the weak efforts which he had employed in favor of

the bishop of Beauvais, who was in a like condition. The legate, to show

his impartiality, laid at the same time the kingdom of France and the

duchy of Normandy under an interdict; and the two kings found themselves

obliged to make an exchange of these military prelates.

{1200.} Nothing enabled the king to bring this war to a happy issue so

much as the selfish, intriguing character of Philip, who acted, in

the provinces that had declared for Arthur, without any regard to the

interests of that prince. Constantia, seized with a violent jealousy

that he intended to usurp the entire dominion of them, found means to

carry off her son secretly from Paris: she put him into the hands of his

uncle; restored the provinces which had adhered to the young prince; and

made him do homage for the duchy of Brittany, which was regarded as a

rere-fief of Normandy. From this incident, Philip saw that he could not

hope to make any progress against John; and being threatened with an

interdict on account of his irregular divorce from Ingelburga, the

Danish princess whom he had espoused, he became desirous of concluding a

peace with England. After some fruitless conferences, the terms were

at last adjusted; and the two monarchy seemed in this treaty to have an

intention, besides ending the present quarrel, of preventing all future

causes of discord, and of obviating every controversy which could

hereafter arise between them. They adjusted the limits of all their

territories; mutually secured the interests of their vassals, and, to

render the union more durable, John gave his niece, Blanche of Castile,

in marriage to Prince Lewis, Philip’s eldest son, and with her the

baronies of Issoudun and Graçai, and other fiefs in Berri. Nine

barons of the king of England, and as many of the king of France,

were guaranties of this treaty; and all of them swore, that, if their

sovereign violated any article of it, they would declare themselves

against him, and embrace the cause of the injured monarch. John, now

secure, as he imagined, on the side of France indulged his passion for

Isabella, the daughter and heir of Aymar Tailleffer, count of Angouleme,

a lady with whom he had become much enamored. His queen, the heiress of

the family of Glocester, was still alive: Isabella was married to

the count de la Marche, and was already consigned to the care of that

nobleman; though, by reason of her tender years, the marriage had

not been consummated. The passion of John made him overlook all these

obstacles: he persuaded the count of Angouleme to carry off his daughter

from her husband; and having, on some pretence or other, procured a

divorce from his own wife, he espoused Isabella; regardless both of the

menaces of the pope, who exclaimed against these irregular proceedings,

and of the resentment of the injured count, who soon found means of

punishing his powerful and insolent rival.

{1201.} John had not the art of attaching his barons either by affection

or by fear. The count de la Marche, and his brother, the count d’Eu,

taking advantage of the general discontent against him, excited

commotions in Poictou and Normandy, and obliged the king to have

recourse to arms, in order to suppress the insurrection of his vassals.

He summoned together the barons of England, and required them to pass

the sea under his standard, and to quell the rebels: he found that he

possessed as little authority in that kingdom as in his transmarine

provinces. The English barons unanimously replied, that they would not

attend him on this expedition, unless he would promise to restore and

preserve their privileges; the first symptom of a regular association

and plan of liberty among those noblemen. But affairs were not yet fully

ripe for the revolution projected. John, by menacing the barons, broke

the concert; and both engaged many of them to follow him into Normandy,

and obliged the rest, who staid behind, to pay him a scutage of two

marks on each knight’s fee, as the price of their exemption from the

service.

The force which John carried abroad with him, and that which joined him

in Normandy, rendered him much superior to his malecontent barons; and

so much the more, as Philip did not publicly give them any countenance,

and seemed as yet determined to persevere steadily in the alliance

which he had contracted with England. But the king, elated with his

superiority, advanced claims which gave a universal alarm to his

vassals, and diffused still wider the general discontent. As the

jurisprudence of those times required that the causes in the lord’s

court should chiefly be decided by duel, he carried along with him

certain bravos, whom he retained as champions, and whom he destined to

fight with his barons, in order to determine any controversy which he

might raise against them. The count de la Marche and other noblemen

regarded this proceeding as an affront, as well as an injury; and

declared, that they would never draw their swords against men of such

inferior quality. The king menaced them with vengeance; but he had not

vigor to employ against them the force in his hands, or to prosecute the

injustice, by crushing entirely the nobles who opposed it.

This government, equally feeble and violent, gave the injured barons

courage, as well as inclination, to carry further their opposition: they

appealed to the king of France; complained of the denial of justice

in John’s court; demanded redress from him as their superior lord; and

entreated him to employ his authority, and prevent their final ruin and

oppression. Philip perceived his advantage, opened his mind to great

projects, interposed in behalf of the French barons, and began to talk

in a high and menacing style to the king of England. {1202.} John,

who could not disavow Philip’s authority, replied, that it belonged to

himself first to grant them a trial by their peers in his own court; it

was not till he failed in this duty, that he was answerable to his peers

in the supreme court of the French king; and he promised, by a fair

and equitable judicature, to give satisfaction to his barons. When the

nobles, in consequence of this engagement, demanded a safe conduct, that

they might attend his court, he at first refused it: upon the renewal

of Philip’s menaces, he promised to grant their demand; he violated

this promise: fresh menaces extorted from him a promise to surrender

to Philip the fortresses of Tillíeres and Boutavant, as a security for

performance; he again violated this engagement: his enemies, sensible

both of his weakness and want of faith combined still closer in the

resolution of pushing him to extremities; and a new and powerful ally

soon appeared to encourage them in their invasion of this odious and

despicable government.

{1203.} The young duke of Brittany, who was now rising to man’s estate,

sensible of the dangerous character of his uncle, determined to

seek both his security and elevation by a union with Philip and

the malecontent barons. He joined the French army which had begun

hostilities against the king of England: he was received with great

marks of distinction by Philip; was knighted by him; espoused his

daughter Mary; and was invested not only in the duchy of Brittany, but

in the counties of Anjou and Maine, which he had formerly resigned

to his uncle. Every attempt succeeded with the allies. Tillieres and

Boutavant were taken by Philip, after making a feeble defence: Mortimar

and Lyons fell into his hands almost without resistance. That prince

next invested Gournai; and opening the sluices of a lake which lay in

the neighborhood, poured such a torrent of water into the place, that

the garrison deserted it, and the French monarch, without striking a

blow, made himself master of that important fortress. The progress of

the French arms was rapid, and promised more considerable success than

usually in that age attended military enterprises. In answer to every

advance which the king made towards peace, Philip still insisted that

he should resign all his transmarine dominions to his nephew and rest

contented with the kingdom of England; when an event happened, which

seemed to turn the scales in favor of John, and to give him a decisive

superiority over his enemies.

Young Arthur, fond of military renown, had broken into Poictou at the

head of a small army; and passing near Mirebeau, he heard that his

grandmother, Queen Eleanor, who had always opposed his interests, was

lodged in that place and was protected by a weak garrison and ruinous

fortifications. He immediately determined to lay siege to the fortress,

and make himself master of her person; but John, roused from his

indolence by so pressing an occasion, collected an army of English and

Brabançons, and advanced from Normandy with hasty marches to the relief

of the queen mother. He fell on Arthur’s camp, before that prince was

aware of the danger; dispersed his army; took him prisoner together with

the count de la Marche, Geoffrey de Lusignan, and the most considerable

of the revolted barons, and returned in triumph to Normandy. Philip,

who was lying before Arques, in that duchy, raised the siege and retired

upon his approach. The greater part of the prisoners were sent over to

England, but Arthur was shut up in the castle of Falaise.

The king had here a conference with his nephew; represented to him

the folly of his pretensions; and required him to renounce the French

alliance, which had encouraged him to live in a state of enmity with all

his family; but the brave, though imprudent youth, rendered more haughty

from misfortunes, maintained the justice of his cause; asserted his

claim, not only to the French provinces, but to the crown of England;

and, in his turn, required the king to restore the son of his elder

brother to the possession of his inheritance; John, sensible, from these

symptoms of spirit, that the young prince, though now a prisoner, might

hereafter prove a dangerous enemy, determined to prevent all future

peril by despatching his nephew; and Arthur was never more heard of.

The circumstances which attended this deed of darkness were, no

doubt, carefully concealed by the actors, and are variously related by

historians; but the most probable account is as follows: The king, it

is said, first proposed to William de la Braye, one of his servants,

to despatch Arthur; but William replied that he was a gentleman, not

a hangman; and he positively refused compliance. Another instrument of

murder was found, and was despatched with proper orders to Falaise; but

Huber de Bourg, chamberlain to the king, and constable of the castle,

feigning that he himself would execute the king’s mandate, sent back the

assassin, spread the report that the young prince was dead, and publicly

performed all the ceremonies of his interment; but finding that the

Bretons vowed revenge for the murder, and that all the revolted barons

persevered more obstinately in their rebellion, he thought it prudent to

reveal the secret, and to inform the world that the duke of Brittany

was still alive, and in his custody. This discovery proved fatal to the

young prince: John first removed him to the castle of Rouen; and coming

in a boat, during the night time, to that place, commanded Arthur to

be brought forth to him. The young prince, aware of his danger, and now

more subdued by the continuance of his misfortunes, and by the approach

of death, threw himself on his knees before hia uncle, and begged for

mercy: but the barbarous tyrant, making no reply, stabbed him with his

own hands; and fastening a stone to the dead body, threw it into the

Seine.

All men were struck with horror at this inhuman deed; and from that

moment the king, detested by his subjects, retained a very precarious

authority over both the people and the barons in his dominions. The

Bretons, enraged at this disappointment in their fond hopes, waged

implacable war against him; and fixing the succession of their

government, put themselves in a posture to revenge the murder of their

sovereign. John had got into his power his niece, Eleanor, sister to

Arthur, commonly called ‘the damsel of Brittany,’ and carrying her over

to England, detained her ever after in captivity:[*] but the Bretons, in

despair of recovering this princess, chose Alice for their sovereign;

a younger daughter of Constantia, by her second marriage with Gui

de Thouars; and they intrusted the government of the duchy to that

nobleman. The states of Brittany meanwhile carried their complaints

before Philip as their liege lord, and demanded justice for the violence

committed by John on the person of Arthur, so near a relation, who,

notwithstanding the homage which he did to Normandy, was always

regarded as one of the chief vassals of the crown. Philip received their

application with pleasure; summoned John to stand a trial before him;

and on his non-appearance, passed sentence, with the concurrence of the

peers, upon that prince; declared him guilty of felony and parricide;

and adjudged him to forfeit to his superior lord all his seigniories and

fiefs in France.[**]

[* Trivet, p. 143. T. Wykes, p. 36. Ypod. Neust.

p. 469.]

[** W. Heming. p. 455. M. West. p. 264. Knyghton,

p. 2420]

The king of France, whose ambitious and active spirit had been hitherto

confined, either by the sound policy of Henry, or the martial genius

of Richard, seeing now the opportunity favorable against this base and

odious prince, embraced the project of expelling the English, or rather

the English king, from France, and of annexing to the crown so many

considerable fiefs, which, during several ages, had been dismembered

from it. Many of the other great vassals, whose jealousy might have

interposed, and have obstructed the execution of this project, were not

at present in a situation to oppose it; and the rest either looked

on with indifference or gave their assistance to this dangerous

aggrandizement of their superior lord. The earls of Flanders and Blois

were engaged in the holy war: the count of Champagne was an infant, and

under the guardianship of Philip: the duchy of Brittany, enraged at the

murder of their prince, vigorously promoted all his measures: and the

general defection of John’s vassals made every enterprise easy and

successful against him. Philip, after taking several castles and

fortresses beyond the Loire, which he either garrisoned or dismantled,

received the submissions of the count of Alençon, who deserted John, and

delivered up all the places under his command to the French; upon which

Philip broke up his camp, in order to give the troops some repose after

the fatigues of the campaign. John, suddenly collecting some forces,

laid siege to Alençon; and Philip, whose dispersed army could not

be brought together in time to succor it, saw himself exposed to the

disgrace of suffering the oppression of his friend and confederate.

But his active and fertile genius found an expedient against this evil.

There was held at that very time a tournament at Moret, in the Gatinois;

whither all the chief nobility of France and the neighboring countries

had resorted, in order to signalize their prowess and address. Philip

presented himself before them; craved their assistance in his distress;

and pointed out the plains of Alençon, as the most honorable field in

which they could display their generosity and martial spirit. Those

valorous knights vowed that they would take vengeance on the base

parricide, the stain of arms and of chivalry; and putting themselves,

with all their retinue, under the command of Philip, instantly marched

to raise the siege of Alençon. John, hearing of their approach, fled

from before the place; and in the hurry, abandoned all his tents,

machines, and baggage to the enemy.

This feeble effort was the last exploit of that slothful and cowardly

prince for the defence of his dominions. He thenceforth remained in

total inactivity at Rouen; passing ill his time with his young wife in

pastimes and amusements, as if his state had been in the most profound

tranquillity, or his affairs in the most prosperous condition. If he

ever mentioned war, it was only to give himself vaunting airs, which, in

the eyes of all men, rendered him still more despicable and ridiculous.

“Let the French go on,” said he; “I will retake in a day what it has

cost them years to acquire.”[*] His stupidity and indolence appeared so

extraordinary that the people endeavored to account for the infatuation

by sorcery, and believed that he was thrown into this lethargy by some

magic or witchcraft. The English barons, finding that their time was

wasted to no purpose, and that they must suffer the disgrace of seeing,

without resistance, the progress of the French arms, withdrew from their

colors, and secretly returned to their own country,[**] No one thought

of defending a man who seemed to have deserted himself; and his subjects

regarded his fate with the same indifference, to which in this pressing

exigency, they saw him totally abandoned.

[* M. Paris, p. 146. M. West. p. 266.]

[** M. Paris, p. 146. M. West. p. 264,]

John, while he neglected all domestic resources, had the meanness to

betake himself to a foreign power, whose protection he claimed: he

applied to the pope, Innocent III., and entreated him to interpose his

authority between him and the French monarch. Innocent, pleased with

any occasion of exerting his superiority, sent Philip orders to stop the

progress of his arms, and to make peace with the king of England. But

the French barons received the message with indignation; disclaimed the

temporal authority assumed by the pontiff; and vowed that they would,

to the uttermost, assist their prince against all his enemies; Philip,

seconding their ardor, proceeded, instead of obeying the pope’s envoys,

to lay siege to Chateau Gaillard, the most considerable fortress which

remained to guard the frontiers of Normandy.

{1204.} Chateau Gaillard was situated partly on an island in the

River Seine, partly on a rock opposite to it; and was secured by every

advantage which either art or nature could bestow upon it. The late

king, having cast his eye on this favorable situation, had spared no

labor or expense in fortifying it; and it was defended by Roger de Laci,

constable of Chester, a determined officer, at the head of a numerous

garrison. Philip, who despaired of taking the place by force proposed

to reduce it by famine; and that he might cut off its communication with

the neighboring country, he threw a bridge across the Seine, while he

himself, with his army blockaded it by land. The earl of Pembroke, the

man of greatest vigor and capacity in the English court, formed a plan

for breaking through the French intrenchments, and throwing relief into

the place. He carried with him an army of four thousand infantry and

three thousand cavalry, and suddenly attacked, with great success,

Philip’s camp in the night time; having left orders that a fleet of

seventy flat-bottomed vessels should sail up the Seine, and fall at the

same instant on the bridge. But the wind and the current of the river,

by retarding the vessels, disconcerted this plan of operations; and it

was morning before the fleet appeared; when Pembroke, though successful

in the beginning of the action, was already repulsed with considerable

loss, and the king of France had leisure to defend himself against these

new assailants, who also met with a repulse. After this misfortune, John

made no further efforts for the relief of Château Gaillard: and Philip

had all the leisure requisite for conducting and finishing the siege.

Roger de Laci defended himself for a twelvemonth with great obstinacy;

and having bravely repelled every attack, and patiently borne all the

hardships of famine, he was at last overpowered by a sudden assault in

the night time, and made prisoner of war, with his garrison.[*] Philip,

who knew how to respect valor, even in an enemy, treated him with

civility, and gave him the whole city of Paris for the place of his

confinement.

[* Trivet p. 144. Gul. Britto, lib. vii. Ann.

Waverl, p. 168.]

When this bulwark of Normandy was once subdued, all the province lay

open to the inroads of Philip; and the king of England despaired of

being any longer able to defend it. He secretly prepared vessels for a

scandalous flight; and, that the Normans might no longer doubt of his

resolution to abandon them, he ordered the fortifications of Pont de

l’Arche, Moulineux, and Monfort l’Amauri to be demolished. Not daring

to repose confidence in any of his barons whom he believed to be

universally engaged in a conspiracy against him, he intrusted the

government of the province to Arenas Martin and Lupicaire, two mercenary

Brabançons, whom he had retained in his service. Philip, now secure

of his prey, pushed his conquests with vigor and success against

the dismayed Normans. Falaise was first besieged; and Lupicare, who

commanded in this impregnable fortress, after surrendering the place,

enlisted himself with his troops in the service of Philip, and carried

on hostilities against his ancient master. Caen, Coutance, Seez, Evreux,

Baieux, soon fell into the hands of the French monarch, and all

the lower Normandy was reduced under his dominion! To forward his

enterprises on the other division of the province, Gui de Thouars, at

the head of the Bretons, broke into the territory, and took Mount St.

Michael, Avranches, and all the other fortresses in that neighborhood.

The Normans, who abhorred the French yoke and who would have defended

themselves to the last extremity, if their prince had appeared to

conduct them, found no resource but in submission; and every city opened

its gates as soon as Philip appeared before it. Rouen alone, Arques,

and Verneuil determined to maintain their liberties; and formed a

confederacy for mutual defence. {1205.} Philip began with the siege of

Rouen: the inhabitants were so inflamed with hatred to France, that on

the appearance of his army, they fell on all the natives of that country

whom they found within their walls, and put tham to death. But after the

French king had begun his operations with success, and had taken some of

their outworks, the citizens, seeing no resource, offered to capitulate;

and demanded only thirty days to advertise their prince of their danger,

and to require succors against the enemy. Upon the expiration of the

term, as no supply had arrived, they opened their gates to Philip;[*]

and the whole province soon after imitated the example, and submitted to

the victor. Thus was this important territory reunited to the crown of

France, about three centuries after the cession of it by Charles the

Simple to Rollo, the first duke; and the Normans, sensible that this

conquest was probably final, demanded the privilege of being governed

by French laws; which Philip, making a few alterations on the ancient

Norman customs, readily granted them. But the French monarch had too

much ambition and genius to stop in his present career of success. He

carried his victorious army into the western provinces; soon reduced

Anjou, Maine, Touraine, and part of Poictou;[**] and in this manner the

French crown, during the reign of one able and active prince, received

such an accession of power and grandeur, as, in the ordinary course of

things, it would have required several ages to attain.

John, on his arrival in England, that he might cover the disgrace of his

own conduct, exclaimed loudly against his barons, who, he pretended, had

deserted his standard in Normandy; and he arbitrarily extorted from them

a seventh of all their movables, as a punishment for the offence.[***]

[* Trivet, p. 147. Ypod. Neust. p. 469.]

[** Trivet, p 149]

[*** M. Paris, p. 146. M. West. p. 265.]

Soon after he forced them to grant him a scutage of two marks and a half

on each knights’ fee for an expedition into Normandy; but he did not

attempt to execute the service for which he pretended to exact it. Next

year, he summoned all the barons of his realm to attend him on this

foreign expedition, and collected ships from all the seaports; but

meeting with opposition from some of his ministers, and abandoning

his design, he dismissed both fleet and army, and then renewed his

exclamations against the barons for deserting him. He next put to sea

with a small army, and his subjects believed that he was resolved to

expose himself to the utmost hazard for the defence and recovery of his

dominions; but they were surprised, after a few days, to see him

return again into harbor, without attempting anything. {1206.} In the

subsequent season, he had the courage to carry his hostile measures

a step farther. Gui de Thouars, who governed Brittany, jealous of the

rapid progress made by his ally, the French king, promised to join the

king of England with all his forces; and John ventured abroad with a

considerable army, and landed at Rochelle. He marched to Angers, which

he took and reduced to ashes. But the approach of Philip with an army

threw him into a panic; and he immediately made proposals for peace, and

fixed a place of interview with his enemy; but instead of keeping

this engagement, he stole off with his army, embarked at Rochelle,

and returned, loaded with new shame and disgrace, into England. The

mediation of the pope procured him at last a truce for two years

with the French monarch;[*] almost all the transmarine provinces

were ravished from him; and his English barons, though harassed with

arbitrary taxes and fruitless expeditions, saw themselves and their

country baffled and affronted in every enterprise.

[* Rymer, vol. i. p. 141.]

In an age when personal valor was regarded as the chief accomplishment,

such conduct as that of John, always disgraceful, must be exposed to

peculiar contempt; and he must thenceforth have expected to rule his

turbulent vassals with a very doubtful authority. But the government

exercised by the Norman princes had wound up the royal power to so high

a pitch, and so much beyond the usual tenor of the feudal constitutions,

that it still behoved him to be debased by new affronts and disgraces,

ere his barons could entertain the view of conspiring against him in

order to retrench his prerogatives.

The church, which at that time declined not a contest with the most

powerful and most vigorous monarchs, took first advantage of John’s

imbecility; and, with the most aggravating circumstances of insolence

and scorn, fixed her yoke upon him.

{1207.} The papal chair was then filled by Innocent III., who, having

attained that dignity at the age of thirty-seven years, and being

endowed with a lofty and enterprising genius gave full scope to

his ambition, and attempted, perhaps more openly than any of his

predecessors, to convert that superiority which was yielded him by all

the European princes, into a real dominion over them. The hierarchy,

protected by the Roman pontiff, had already carried to an enormous

height its usurpations upon the civil power; but in order to extend them

farther, and render them useful to the court of Rome, it was necessary

to reduce the ecclesiastics themselves under an absolute monarchy, and

to make them entirely dependent on their spiritual leader. For this

purpose, Innocent first attempted to impose taxes at pleasure upon the

clergy; and in the first year of this century, taking advantage of the

popular frenzy for crusades, he sent collectors over all Europe, who

levied by his authority the fortieth of all ecclesiastical revenues for

the relief of the Holy Land, and received the voluntary contributions

of the laity to a like amount.[*] The same year, Hubert, archbishop of

Canterbury, attempted another innovation, favorable to ecclesiastical

and papal power: in the king’s absence, he summoned, by his legantine

authority, a synod of all the English clergy, contrary to the inhibition

of Geoffrey Fitz-Peter, the chief justiciary; and no proper censure was

ever passed on this encroachment, the first of the kind, upon the royal

power. But a favorable incident soon after happened, which enabled so

aspiring a pontiff as Innocent to extend still farther his usurpations

on so contemptible a prince as John.

[* Rymer, vol. i. p. 119.]

Hubert, the primate, died in 1205; and as the monks or canons of

Christ-church, Canterbury, possessed a right of voting in the election

of their archbishop, some of the juniors of the order, who lay in wait

for that event, met clandestinely the very night of Hubert’s death;

and without any congé d’élire from the king, chose Reginald, their

sub-prior, for the successor; installed him in the archiepiscopal throne

before midnight; and having enjoined him the strictest secrecy, sent

him immediately to Rome, in order to solicit the confirmation of his

election.[*] The vanity of Reginald prevailed over his prudence; and he

no sooner arrived in Flanders than he revealed to every one the purpose

of his journey, which was immediately known in England.[**] The king

was enraged at the novelty and temerity of the attempt, in filling so

important an office without his knowledge or consent: the suffragan

bishops of Canterbury, who were accustomed to concur in the choice of

their primate, were no less displeased at the exclusion given them in

this election: the senior monks of Christ-church were injured by the

irregular proceedings of their juniors: the juniors themselves, ashamed

of their conduct, and disgusted with the levity of Reginald, who

had broken his engagements with them, were willing to set aside his

election:[***] and all men concurred in the design of remedying the

false measures which had been taken. But as John knew that this affair

would be canvassed before a superior tribunal, where the interposition

of royal authority in bestowing ecclesiastical benefices was very

invidious; where even the cause of suffragan bishops was not so

favorable as that of monks; he determined to make the new election

entirely unexceptionable, he submitted the affair wholly to the

canons of Christ-church; and departing from the right claimed by his

predecessors, ventured no farther than to inform them, privately, that

they would do him an acceptable service if they chose John de Gray,

bishop of Norwich, for their primate.[****]

[* M. Paris, p 148. M. West. p. 266.]

[** M. Paris, p. 148. M. West. p. 266.]

[*** M. West. p. 266.]

[**** M. Paris, p. 149. M. West. p. 266.]

The election of that prelate was accordingly made without a

contradictory vote; and the king, to obviate all contests, endeavored

to persuade the suffragan bishops not to insist on their claim of

concurring in the election; but those prelates, persevering in their

pretensions, sent an agent to maintain their cause before Innocent;

while the king, and the convent of Christ-church, despatched twelve

monks of that order to support, before the same tribunal, the election

of the bishop of Norwich.

Thus there lay three different claims before the pope, whom all parties

allowed to be the supreme arbiter in the contest The claim of the

suffragans, being so opposite to the usual maxims of the papal court,

was soon set aside: the election of Reginald was so obviously fraudulent

and irregular, that there was no possibility of defending it: but

Innocent maintained, that though this election was null and invalid, it

ought previously to have been declared such by the sovereign pontiff,

before the monks could proceed to a new election; and that the choice

of the bishop of Norwich was of course as uncanonical as that of his

competitor.[*] Advantage was, therefore taken of this subtlety for

introducing a precedent, by which the see of Canterbury, the most

important dignity, in the church after the papal throne, should ever

after be at the disposal of the court of Rome.

While the pope maintained so many fierce contests, in order to wrest

from princes the right of granting investitures, and to exclude laymen

from all authority in conferring ecclesiastical benefices, he was

supported by the united influence of the clergy; who, aspiring to

independence, fought, with all the ardor of ambition, and all the zeal

of superstition, under his sacred banners. But no sooner was this point,

after a great effusion of blood, and the convulsions of many states,

established in some tolerable degree, than the victorious leader as is

usual, turned his arms against his own community, and aspired to centre

all power in his person. By the invention of reserves, provisions,

commendams, and other devices, the pope gradually assumed the right

of filling vacant benefices; and the plenitude of his apostolic power,

which was not subject to any limitations, supplied all defects of title

in the person on whom he bestowed preferment. The canons which regulated

elections were purposely rendered intricate and involved: frequent

disputes arose among candidates: appeals were every day carried to

Rome: the apostolic see, besides reaping pecuniary advantages from these

contests, often exercised the power of setting aside both the litigants,

and, on pretence of appeasing faction, nominated a third person, who

might be more acceptable to the contending parties.

The present controversy about the election to the see of Canterbury

afforded Innocent an opportunity of claiming this right; and he failed

not to perceive and avail himself of the advantage. He sent for the

twelve monks deputed by the convent to maintain the cause of the bishop

of Norwich; and commanded them, under the penalty of excommunication, to

choose for their primate, Cardinal Langton, an Englishman by birth, but

educated in France, and connected, by his interests and attachments,

with the see of Rome.[**]

[* M. Paris, p. 155. Chron. de Mailr.p. 182.]

[** M. Paris, p 155. Ann. Waverl. p. 169. W.

Heming. p. 553 Knyghton, p. 2415.]

In vain did the monks represent, that they had received from their

convent no authority for this purpose; that an election without a

previous writ from the king, would be deemed highly irregular and that

they were merely agents for another person, whose right they had no

power or pretence to abandon. None of them had the courage to persevere

in this opposition, except one, Elias de Brantefield: all the rest,

overcome by the menaces and authority of the pope, complied with his

orders, and made the election required of them.

Innocent, sensible that this flagrant usurpation would be highly

resented by the court of England, wrote John a mollifying letter;

sent him four golden rings set with precious stones; and endeavored to

enhance the value of the present, by informing him of the many mysteries

implied in it. He begged him to consider seriously the form of the

rings, their number, their matter, and their color. Their form, he said,

being round, shadowed out eternity, which had neither beginning nor end;

and he ought thence to learn his duty of aspiring from earthly objects

to heavenly, from things temporal to tilings eternal. The number four,

being a square, denoted steadiness of mind, not to be subverted either

by adversity or prosperity, fixed forever on the firm basis of the four

cardinal virtues. Gold, which is the matter, being the most precious

of metals, signified wisdom, which is the most valuable of all

accomplishments, and justly preferred by Solomon to riches, power, and

all exterior attainments. The blue color of the sapphire represented

faith; the verdure of the emerald, hope; the redness of the ruby,

charity; and the splendor of the topaz, good works.[*] By these

conceits, Innocent endeavored to repay John for one of the most

important prerogatives of his crown, which he had ravished from him;

conceits probably admired by Innocent himself. For it is easily possible

for a man, especially in a barbarous age, to unite strong talents for

business with an absurd taste for literature and the arts.

John was inflamed with the utmost rage when he heard of this attempt

of the court of Rome;[**] and he immediately vented his passion on the

monks of Christ-church, whom he found inclined to support the election

made by their fellows at Rome.

[* Rymer, vol. i. p. 139. M. Paris, p. 155]

[** Rymer, vol. i. p. 143.]

He sent Fulk de Cantelupe, and Henry de Cornhulle, two knights of his

retinue, men of violent tempers and rude manners, to expel them the

convent, and take possession of their revenues. These knights entered

the monastery with drawn swords, commanded the prior and the monks to

depart the kingdom, and menaced them, that in case of disobedience

they would instantly burn them with the convent.[*] Innocent,

prognosticating, from the violence and imprudence of these measures,

that John would finally sink in the contest, persevered the more

vigorously in his pretensions, and exhorted the king not to oppose God

and the church any longer, nor to persecute that cause for which the

holy martyr St. Thomas had sacrificed his life, and which had exalted

him equal to the highest saints in heaven;[**] a clear hint to John to

profit by the example of his father, and to remember the prejudices and

established principles of his subjects, who bore a profound veneration

to that martyr, and regarded his merits as the subject of their chief

glory and exultation.

Innocent, finding that John was not sufficiently tamed to submission,

sent three prelates, the bishops of London, Ely, and Worcester, to

intimate, that, if he persevered in his disobedience, the sovereign

pontiff would be obliged to lay the kingdom under an interdict.[***]

All the other prelates threw themselves on their knees before him, and

entreated him, with tears in their eyes, to prevent the scandal of this

sentence, by making a speedy submission to his spiritual father, by

receiving from his hands the new elected primate, and by restoring the

monks of Christ-church to all their rights and possessions. He burst out

into the most indecent invectives against the prelates; swore by God’s

teeth, his usual oath, that, if the pope presumed to lay his kingdom

under an interdict, he would send to him all the bishops and clergy of

England, and would confiscate all their estates; and threatened that,

if thenceforth he caught any Romans in his dominions, he would put out

their eyes, and cut off their noses, in order to set a mark upon them,

which might distinguish them from all other nations.[****]

[* M. Paris, p. 156. Trivet, p. 151. Ann. Waverl.

p. 169.]

[** M. Paris, p. 157.]

[*** M. Paris, p. 157.]

[**** M. Paris, p. 157.]

Amidst all this idle violence, John stood on such bad terms with his

nobility, that he never dared to assemble the states of the kingdom,

who, in so, just a cause, would probably have adhered to any other

monarch, and have defended with vigor the liberties of the nation

against these palpable usurpations of the court of Rome. Innocent,

therefore, perceiving the king’s weakness, fulminated at last the

sentence of interdict which he had for some time held suspended over

him.[*]

The sentence of interdict was at that time the great instrument of

vengeance and policy employed by the court of Rome; was denounced

against sovereigns for the lightest offences; and made the guilt of one

person involve the ruin of millions, even in their spiritual and eternal

welfare. The execution of it was calculated to strike the senses in

the highest degree, and to operate with irresistible force on the

superstitious minds of the people. The nation was of a sudden deprived

of all exterior exercise of its religion: the altars were despoiled of

their ornaments: the crosses, the relics, the images, the statues of the

saints were laid on the ground; and as if the air itself were profaned,

and might pollute them by its contact, the priests carefully covered

them up, even from their own approach and veneration. The use of bells

entirely ceased in all the churches: the bells themselves were removed

from the steeples, and laid on the ground with the other sacred

utensils. Mass was celebrated with shut doors; and none but the

priests were admitted to that holy institution. The laity partook of no

religious rite, except baptism to new-born infants, and the communion to

the dying: the dead were not interred in consecrated ground: they were

thrown into ditches, or buried in common fields; and their obsequies

were not attended with prayers or any hallowed ceremony Marriage was

celebrated in the churchyards;[**] and that every action in life might

bear the marks of this dreadful situation, the people were prohibited

the use of meat, as in Lent, or times of the highest penance; were

debarred from all pleasures and entertainments; and were forbidden even

to salute each other, or so much as to shave their beards, and give any

decent attention to their person and apparel. Every circumstance carried

symptoms of the deepest distress, and of the most immediate apprehension

of divine vengeance and indignation.

The king, that he might oppose the temporal to their spiritual terrors,

immediately, from his own authority, confiscated the estates of all the

clergy who obeyed the interdict;[***] banished the prelates, confined

the monks in their convents, and gave them only such a small allowance

from their own estates, as would suffice to provide them with food and

raiment.

[* M. Paris, p. 157. Trivet, p. 152. Ann. Waverl.

p. 170. M. West. p. 268.]

[** Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 51.]

[*** Ann. Waverl. p. 170]

He treated with the utmost rigor all Langton’s adherents, and every one

that showed any disposition to obey the commands of Rome: and in order

to distress the clergy in the tenderest point, and at the same time

expose them to reproach and ridicule, he threw into prison all their

concubines, and required high fines as the price of their liberty.[*]

After the canons which established the celibacy of the clergy were, by

the zealous endeavors of Archbishop Anselrn, more rigorously executed in

England, the ecclesiastics gave, almost universally and avowedly, into

the use of concubinage and the court of Rome, which had no interest in

prohibiting this practice, made very slight opposition to it. The custom

was become so prevalent, that, in some cantons of Switzerland, before

the reformation, the laws not only permitted, but, to avoid scandal,

enjoined the use of concubines to the younger clergy;[**] and it was

usual every where for priests to apply to the ordinary, and obtain from

him a formal liberty for this indulgence. The bishop commonly took

care to prevent the practice from degenerating into licentiousness: he

confined the priest to the use of one woman, required him to be constant

to her bed, obliged him to provide for her subsistence and that of her

children; and, though the offspring was, in the eye of the law, deemed

illegitimate, this commerce was really a kind of inferior marriage, such

as is still practised in Germany among the nobles; and may be regarded

by the candid, as an appeal from the tyranny of civil and ecclesiastical

institutions, to the more virtuous and more unerring laws of nature.

[* M. Paris, p. 158. Ann. Waverl. p. 170.]

[** Padre Paolo, Hist. Cone. Prid. lib. i.]

The quarrel between the king and the see of Rome continued for some

years; and though many of the clergy, from the fear of punishment,

obeyed the orders of John, and celebrated divine service, they complied

with the utmost reluctance, and were regarded, both by themselves and

the people, as men who betrayed their principles, and sacrificed their

conscience to temporal regards and interests. During this violent

situation, the king, in order to give a lustre to his government,

attempted military expeditions against Scotland, against Ireland,

against the Welsh:[*] and he commonly prevailed, more from the weakness

of his enemies than from his own vigor or abilities. Meanwhile, the

danger to which hia government stood continually exposed from the

discontents of the ecclesiastics, increased his natural propension to

tyranny; and he seems to have even wantonly disgusted all orders of

men, especially his nobles, from whom alone he could reasonably expect

support and assistance. He dishonored their families by his licentious

amours; he published edicts, prohibiting them from hunting feathered

game, and thereby restrained them from their favorite occupation and

amusement;[**] he ordered all the hedges and fences near his forests to

be levelled, that his deer might have more ready access into the

fields for pasture; and he continually loaded the nation with arbitrary

impositions.

[* W. Heming. p. 556. Ypod. Neust p. 450.

Knyghton, p. 2420 M. West p. 268.]

{1208.} Conscious of the general hatred which he had incurred, he

required his nobility to give him hostages for security of their

allegiance; and they were obliged to put in his hands their sons,

nephews, or near relations. When his messengers came with like orders

to the castle of William de Braouse, a baron of great note, the lady

of that nobleman replied, that she would never intrust her son into the

hands of one who had murdered his own nephew, while in his custody. Her

husband reproved her for the severity of this speech; but, sensible

of his danger, he immediately fled with his wife and son into Ireland,

where he endeavored to conceal himself. Tha king discovered the unhappy

family in their retreat; seized the wife and son, whom he starved to

death in prison; and the baron himself narrowly escaped, by flying into

France.

{1209.} The court of Rome had artfully contrived a gradation of

sentences; by which it kept offenders in awe; still afforded them an

opportunity of preventing the next anathema by submission; and, in case

of their obstinacy, was able to refresh the horror of the people against

them, by new denunciations of the wrath and vengeance of Heaven. As the

sentence of interdict had not produced the desired effect on John,

and as his people, though extremely discontented had hitherto been

restrained from rising in open rebellion against him, he was soon

to look for the sentence of excommunication; and he had reason to

apprehend, that, notwithstanding all his precautions, the most dangerous

consequences might ensue from it. He was witness of the other scenes

which at that very time were acting in Europe, and which displayed the

unbounded and uncontrolled power of the papacy. Innocent, far from being

dismayed at his contests with the king of England, had excommunicated

the emperor Otho, John’s nephew;[*] and soon brought that powerful

and haughty prince to submit to his authority. He published a crusade

against the Albigenses, a species of enthusiasts in the south of France,

whom he denominated heretics; because, like other enthusiasts, they

neglected the rites of the church, and opposed the power and influence

of the clergy: the people from all parts of Europe, moved by their

superstition and their passion for wars and adventures, flocked to his

standard: Simon de Montfort, the general of the crusade, acquired to

himself a sovereignty in these provinces: the count of Toulouse, who

protected, or perhaps only tolerated, the Albigenses, was stripped of

his dominions: and these sectaries themselves, though the most innocent

and inoffensive of mankind, were exterminated with all the circumstances

of extreme violence and barbarity. Here were therefore both an army and

a general, dangerous from their zeal and valor, who might be directed

to act against John; and Innocent, after keeping the thunder long

suspended, gave at last authority to the bishops of London, Ely, and

Worcester, to fulminate the sentence of excommunication against

him.[**] These prelates obeyed; though their brethren were deterred from

publishing, as the pope required of them, the sentence in the several

churches of their dioceses.

No sooner was the excommunication known, than the effects of it

appeared. Geoffrey, archdeacon of Norwich, who was intrusted with a

considerable office in the court of exchequer, being informed of it

while sitting on the bench observed to his colleagues the danger of

serving under an excommunicated king; and he immediately left his chair,

and departed the court. John gave orders to seize him, to throw him

into prison, to cover his head with a great leaden cope, and by this and

other severe usage, he soon put an end to his life:[***] nor was there

any thing wanting to Geoffrey, except the dignity and rank of Becket, to

exalt him to an equal station in heaven with that great and celebrated

martyr.

[* M. Paris, p. 160. Trivet, p. 154. M, West. p.

269.]

[** M. Paris, p. 159. M. West. p. 270.]

[*** M. Paris, p. 159.]

Hugh de Wells, the chancellor, being elected by the king’s appointment

bishop of Lincoln, upon a vacancy in that see, desired leave to go

abroad, in order to receive consecration from the archbishop of Rouen;

but he no sooner reached France, than he hastened to Pontigny, where

Langton then resided, and paid submissions to him as his primate. The

bishops, finding themselves exposed either to the jealousy of the king

or hatred of the people, gradually stole out of the kingdom; and at

last there remained only three prelates to perform the functions of the

episcopal office.[*] Many of the nobility, terrified by John’s tyranny,

and obnoxious to him on different accounts, imitated the example of

the bishops; and most of the others, who remained, were with reason

suspected of having secretly entered into a confederacy against him.[**]

John was alarmed at his dangerous situation; a situation which prudence,

vigor, and popularity might formerly have prevented, but which no

virtues or abilities were now sufficient to retrieve. He desired a

conference with Langton at Dover; offered to acknowledge him as primate,

to submit to the pope, to restore the exiled clergy, even to pay them

a limited sum as a compensation for the rents of their confiscated

estates. But Langton, perceiving his advantage, was not satisfied with

these concessions: he demanded that full restitution and reparation

should be made to all the clergy; a condition so exorbitant, that the

king, who probably had not the power of fulfilling it, and who foresaw

that this estimation of damages might amount to an immense sum, finally

broke off the conference.[***]

{1212.} The next gradation of papal sentences was to absolve John’s

subjects from their oaths of fidelity and allegiance, and to declare

every one excommunicated who had any commerce with him, in public or

in private; at his table, in his council, or even in private

conversation:[****] and this sentence was accordingly, with all

imaginable solemnity, pronounced against him. But as John still

persevered in his contumacy, there remained nothing but the sentence of

deposition; which, though intimately connected with the former had been

distinguished from it by the artifice of the court of Rome; and Innocent

determined to dart this last thunderbolt against the refractory monarch.

[* Ann. Waverl. p. 170. Ann. Marg. p. 14.]

[** M. Paris, p. 162. M. West p. 270, 271.]

[*** Ann. Waverl. p. 171.]

[**** M. Paris, p. 161. M. West. p. 270.]

But as a sentence of this kind required an armed force to execute it,

the pontiff, casting his eyes around, fixed at last on Philip, king of

France, as the person into whose powerful hand he could most properly

intrust that weapon, the ultimate resource of his ghostly authority.

And he offered the monarch, besides the remission of all his sins, and

endless spiritual benefits, the property and possession of the kingdom

of England, as the reward of his labor.[*]

{1213.} It was the common concern of all princes to oppose these

exorbitant pretensions of the Roman pontiff, by which they themselves

were rendered vassals, and vassals totally dependent, of the papal

crown: yet even Philip, the most able monarch of the age, was seduced by

present interest, and by the prospect of so tempting a prize, to accept

this liberal offer of the pontiff, and thereby to ratify that authority

which, if he ever opposed its boundless usurpations, might next day

tumble him from the throne. He levied a great army; summoned all the

vassals of the crown to attend him at Rouen; collected a fleet of one

thousand seven hundred vessels, great and small, in the seaports of

Normandy and Picardy; and partly from the zealous spirit of the age,

partly from the personal regard universally paid him, prepared a force

which seemed equal to the greatness of his enterprise. The king, on

the other hand, issued out writs, requiring the attendance of all his

military tenants at Dover, and even of all able-bodied men, to defend

the kingdom in this dangerous extremity. A great number appeared; and

he selected an army of sixty thousand men; a power invincible, had they

been united in affection to their prince, and animated with a becoming

zeal for the defence of their native country.[**]

[* M. Paris, p. 162. M. West, p. 271.]

[** M. Paris, p. 162. M. West, p. 271.]

But the people were swayed by superstition, and regarded their king with

horror, as anathematized by papal censures: the barons, besides lying

under the same prejudices, were all disgusted by his tyranny, and were,

many of them, suspected of holding a secret correspondence with the

enemy: and the incapacity and cowardice of the king himself, ill fitted

to contend with those mighty difficulties, made men prognosticate the

most fatal effects from the French invasion.

Pandolf, whom the pope had chosen for his legate, and appointed to

head this important expedition, had, before he left Rome, applied for

a secret conference with his master, and had asked him, whether, if the

king of England, in this desperate situation, were willing to submit

to the apostolic see, the church should, without the consent of Philip,

grant him any terms of accommodation.[*] Innocent, expecting from his

agreement with a prince so abject both in character and fortune, more

advantages than from his alliance with a great and victorious monarch,

who, after such mighty acquisitions, might become too haughty to be

bound by spiritual chains, explained to Pandolf the conditions on which

he was willing to be reconciled to the king of England. The legate,

therefore, as soon as he arrived in the north of France, sent over two

knights templars to desire an interview with John at Dover, which

was readily granted: he there represented to him in such strong, and

probably in such true colors, his lost condition, the disaffection of

his subjects, the secret combination of his vassals against him, the

mighty armament of France, that John yielded at discretion,[**] and

subscribed to all the conditions which Pandolf was pleased to impose

upon him. He promised, among other articles, that he would submit

himself entirely to the judgment of the pope; that he would acknowledge

Langton for primate; that he would restore all the exiled clergy and

laity who had been banished on account of the contest; that he would

make them full restitution of their goods, and compensation for all

damages, and instantly consign eight thousand pounds, in part of

payment; and that every one outlawed or imprisoned for his adherence to

the pope, should immediately be received into grace and favor.[***] Four

barons swore, along with the king, to the observance of this ignominious

treaty.[****]

[* M. Paris, p. 162.]

[** M. West. p. 271.]

[*** Rymer, vol. i. p. 166. M. Paris, p. 163.

Annal Burt. p. 288.]

[**** Rymer, vol. i p. 170. M. Paris, p. 163.]

But the ignominy of the king was not yet carried to its full height.

Pandolf required him, as the first trial of obedience, to resign his

kingdom to the church; and he persuaded him, that he could nowise so

effectually disappoint the French invasion, as by thus putting himself

under the immediate protection of the apostolic see. John, lying under

the agonies of present terror, made no scruple of submitting to this

condition He passed a charter, in which he said, that, not constrained

by fear, but of his own free will, and by the common advice and consent

of his barons, he had, for remission of hia own sins and those of his

family, resigned England and Ireland to God, to St. Peter and St. Paul,

and to Pope Innocent and his successors in the apostolic chair: he

agreed to hold these dominions as feudatory of the church of Rome, by

the annual payment of a thousand marks; seven hundred for England, three

hundred for Ireland: and he stipulated, that, if he or his successors

should ever presume to revoke or infringe this charter, they should

instantly, except upon admonition they repented of their offence,

forfeit all right to their dominions.[*]

[* Rymer, vol. i. p. 176. M. Paris, p. 165.]

In consequence of this agreement, John did homage to Pandolf as the

pope’s legate, with all the submissive rites which the feudal law

required of vassals before their liege lord and superior. He came

disarmed into the legate’s presence, who was seated on a throne; he

flung himself on his knees before him; he lifted up his joined hands,

and put them within those of Pandolf; he swore fealty to the pope;

and he paid part of the tribute which he owed for his kingdom as the

patrimony of St. Peter. The legate, elated by this supreme triumph of

sacerdotal power, could not forbear discovering extravagant symptoms of

joy and exultation: he trampled on the money, which was laid at his feet

as an earnest of the subjection of the kingdom; an insolence of which,

however offensive to all the English, no one present, except the

archbishop of Dublin, dared to take any notice. But though Pandolf had

brought the king to submit to these base conditions, he still refused

to free him from the excommunication and interdict, till an estimation

should be taken of the losses of the ecclesiastics, and full

compensation and restitution should be made them.

John, reduced to this abject situation under a foreign power, still

showed the same disposition to tyrannize over his subjects, which had

been the chief cause of all his misfortunes. One Peter of Pomfret, a

hermit, had foretold that the king, this very year, should lose his

crown; and for that rash prophecy, he had been thrown into prison in

Corfe castle. Johfi now determined to bring him to punishment as an

impostor; and though the man pleaded that his prophecy was fulfilled,

and that the king had lost the royal and independent crown which he

formerly wore, the defence was supposed to aggravate his guilt: he was

dragged at horses’ tails to the town of Warham, and there hanged on a

gibbet with his son.[*]

When Pandolf, after receiving the homage of John, returned to France,

he congratulated Philip on the success of his pious enterprise; and

informed him that John, moved by the terror of the French arms, had now

come to a just sense of his guilt; had returned to obedience under

the apostolic see; had even consented to do homage to the pope for

his dominions; and having thus made his kingdom a part of St. Peter’s

patrimony, had rendered it impossible for any Christian prince, without

the most manifest and most flagrant impiety, to attack him.[**] Philip

was enraged on receiving this intelligence: he exclaimed, that having,

at the pope’s instigation, undertaken an expedition which had cost him

above sixty thousand pounds sterling, he was frustrated of his purpose,

at the time when its success was become infallible: he complained that

all the expense had fallen upon him; all the advantages had accrued to

Innocent: he threatened to be no longer the dupe of these hypocritical

pretences: and assembling his vassals, he laid before them the ill

treatment which he had received, exposed the interested and fraudulent

conduct of the pope, and required their assistance to execute his

enterprise against England, in which he told them, that notwithstanding

the inhibitions and menaces of the legate, he was determined to

persevere. The French barons were in that age little less ignorant and

superstitious than the English: yet, so much does the influence of those

religious principles depend on the present dispositions of men! they

all vowed to follow their prince on his intended expedition, and were

resolute not to be disappointed of that glory and those riches which

they had long expected from this enterprise. The earl of Flanders alone,

who had previously formed a secret treaty with John, declaring

against the injustice and impiety of the undertaking, retired with his

forces;[***] and Philip, that he might not leave so dangerous an enemy

behind him, first turned his arms against the dominions of that prince.

[* M. Paris, p. 165. Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 56.]

[** Trivet, p. 160.]

[*** M. Paris, p. 166.]

Meanwhile the English fleet was assembled under the earl of Saltsbury,

the king’s natural brother; and, though inferior in number, received

orders to attack the French in their harbors. Salisbury performed this

service with so much success that he took three hundred ships; destroyed

a hundred more;[*] and Philip, finding it impossible to prevent the rest

from falling into the hands of the enemy, set fire to them himself, and

thereby rendered it impossible for him to proceed any farther in his

enterprise.

John, exulting in his present security, insensible to his past disgrace,

was so elated with this success, that he thought of no less than

invading France in his turn, and recovering all those provinces which

the prosperous arms of Philip had formerly ravished from him. He

proposed this expedition to the barons, who were already assembled

for the defence of the kingdom. But the English nobles both hated and

despised their prince: they prognosticated no success to any enterprise

conducted by a such a leader: and, pretending that their time of service

was elapsed, and all their previsions exhausted, they refused to

second his undertaking.[**] The king, however, resolute in his purpose,

embarked with a few followers, and sailed to Jersey, in the foolish

expectation that the barons would at last be ashamed to stay

behind.[***] But finding himself disappointed, he returned to England;

and raising some troops, threatened to take vengeance on all his nobles

for their desertion and disobedience. The archbishop of Canterbury, who

was in a confederacy with the barons here interposed; strictly inhibited

the king from thinking of such an attempt; and threatened him with a

renewal of the sentence of excommunication if he pretended to levy war

upon any of his subjects before the kingdom were freed from the sentence

of interdict.[****]

[* M. Paris, p. 166. Chron. Dunst. vci i. p. 59.

Trivet, p. 157]

[** M. Paris, p. 166.]

[*** M. Paris, p. 166.]

[**** M. Paris, p. 167.]

The church had recalled the several anathemas pronounced against John,

by the same gradual progress with which she had at first issued them.

By receiving his homage, and admitting him to the rank of a vassal,

his deposition had been virtually annulled, and his subjects were

again bound by their oaths of allegiance. The exiled prelates had then

returned in great triumph, with Langton at their head; and the king,

hearing of their approach, went forth to meet them, and throwing

himself on the ground before them, he entreated them with tears to have

compassion on him and the kingdom of England.[*] The primate, seeing

these marks of sincere penitence, led him to the chapter-house of

Winchester, and there administered an oath to him, by which he again

swore fealty and obedience to Pope Innocent and his successors; promised

to love, maintain, and defend holy church and the clergy; engaged that

he would reestablish the good laws of his predecessors, particularly

those of St. Edward, and would abolish the wicked ones; and

expressed his resolution of maintaining justice and right in all his

dominions.[**] The primate next gave him absolution in the requisite

forms, and admitted him to dine with him, to the great joy of all the

people. The sentence of interdict, however, was still upheld against the

kingdom. A new legate, Nicholas, bishop of Frescati, came into England

in the room of Pandolf; and he declared it to be the pope’s intentions

never to loosen that sentence till full restitution were made to the

clergy of every thing taken from them, and ample reparation for all

damages which they had Sustained. He only permitted mass to be said

with a low voice in the churches, till those losses and damages could

be estimated to the satisfaction of the parties. Certain barons were

appointed to take an account of the claims; and John was astonished

at the greatness of the sums to which the clergy made their losses to

amount. No less than twenty thousand marks were demanded by the monks of

Canterbury alone; twenty-three thousand for the see of Lincoln; and the

king, finding these pretensions to be exorbitant and endless, offered

the clergy the sum of a hundred thousand marks for a final acquittal,

The clergy rejected the offer with disdain; but the pope, willing to

favor his new vassal, whom he found zealous in his declarations of

fealty, and regular in paying the stipulated tribute to Rome, directed

his legate to accept of forty thousand. The issue of the whole was, that

the bishops and considerable abbots got reparation beyond what they

had any title to demand; the inferior clergy were obliged to sit down

contented with their losses: and the king, after the interdict was taken

off, renewed, in the most solemn manner, and by a new charter sealed

with gold, his professions of homage and obedience to the see of Rome.

[* M. Paris, p. 166. Ann. Waverl. p. 178.]

[** M. Paris, p. 166.]

{1214.} When this vexatious affair was at last brought to a conclusion,

the king, as if he had nothing further to attend but triumphs

and victories, went over to Poictou, which still acknowledged his

authority;[*] and he carried war into Philip’s dominions.

[* Queen Eleanor died in 1203 or 1204.]

He besieged a castle near Angiers; but the approach of Prince Lewis,

Philip’s son, obliged him to raise the siege with such precipitation,

that he left his tents, machines, and baggage behind him; and he

returned to England with disgrace. About the same time, he heard of the

great and decisive victory gained by the king of France at Bovines over

the emperor Otho, who had entered France at the head of one hundred and

fifty thousand Germans; a victory which established forever the glory

of Philip, and gave full security to all his dominions. John could,

therefore, think henceforth of nothing further than of ruling peaceably

his own kingdom; and his close connections with the pope, which he was

determined at any price to maintain, insured him, as he imagined the

certain attainment of that object. But the last and most grievous scene

of this prince’s misfortunes still awaited him; and he was destined to

pass through a series of more humiliating circumstances than had ever

yet fallen to the lot of any other monarch.

The introduction of the feudal law into England by William the Conqueror

had much infringed the liberties, however imperfect, enjoyed by the

Anglo-Saxons in their ancient government, and had reduced the whole

people to a state of vassalage under the king or barons, and even the

greater part of them to a state of real slavery, the necessity, also,

of intrusting great power in the hands of a prince, who was to maintain

military dominion over a vanquished nation, had engaged the Norman

barons to submit to a more severe and absolute prerogative than that

to which men of their rank, in other feudal governments, were commonly

subjected. The power of the crown, once raised to a high pitch, was not

easily reduced; and the nation, during the course of a hundred and fifty

years, was governed by an authority unknown, in the same degree, to all

the kingdoms founded by the northern conquerors. Henry I., that he might

allure the people to give an exclusion to his elder brother Robert,

had granted them a charter, favorable in many particulars to their

liberties; Stephen had renewed the grant; Henry II. had confirmed it:

but the concessions of all these princes had still remained without

effect; and the same unlimited, at least in regular authority, continued

to be exercised both by them and their successors. The only happiness

was, that arms were never yet ravished from the hands of the barons and

people: the nation, by a great confederacy, might still vindicate its

liberties: and nothing was more likely than the character, conduct, and

fortunes of the reigning prince, to produce such a general combination

against him. Equally odious and contemptible, both in public and

private life, he affronted the barons by his insolence, dishonored their

families by his gallantries, enraged them by his tyranny, and

gave discontent to all ranks of men by his endless exactions and

impositions.[*] The effect of these lawless practices had already

appeared in the general demand made by the barons of a restoration of

their privileges; and after he had reconciled himself to the pope,

by abandoning the independence of the kingdom, he appeared to all his

subjects in so mean a light, that they universally thought they might

with safety and honor insist upon their pretensions.

But nothing forwarded this confederacy so much as the concurrence of

Langton, archbishop of Canterbury; a man whose memory, though he was

obtruded on the nation by a palpable encroachment of the see of Rome,

ought always to be respected by the English. This prelate, whether he

was moved by the generosity of his nature and his affection to public

good; or had entertained an animosity against John, on account of the

long opposition made by that prince to his election; or thought that an

acquisition of liberty to the people would serve to increase and secure

the privileges of the church; had formed the plan of reforming the

government, and had prepared the way for that great innovation, by

inserting those singular clauses above mentioned, in the oath which he

administered to the king, before he would absolve him from the sentence

of excommunication. Soon after, in a private meeting of some principal

barons at London, he showed them a copy of Henry I.’s charter, which,

he said, he had happily found in a monastery; and he exhorted them to

insist on the renewal and observance of it: the barons swore that

they would sooner lose their lives than depart from so reasonable a

demand.[**]

[* Chron. Mailr. p. 188. T. Wykes, p. 36. Ann.

Waverl. p. 181 W. Heming. p. 657.]

[** M. Paris, p. 167.]

The confederacy began now to spread wider, and to comprehend almost all

the barons in England; and a new and more numerous meeting was summoned

by Langton at St. Edmondsbury, under color of devotion. He again

produced to the assembly the old charter of Henry; renewed his

exhortations of unanimity and vigor in the prosecution of their purpose;

and represented in the strongest colors the tyranny to which they had

so long been subjected, and from which it now behoved them to free

themselves and their posterity.[*] The barons, inflamed by his

eloquence, incited by the sense of their own wrongs, and encouraged by

the appearance of their power and numbers, solemnly took an oath, before

the high altar, to adhere to each other, to insist on their demands, and

to make endless war on the king till he should submit to grant them.[**]

They agreed that, after the festival of Christmas, they would prefer in

a body their common petition; and in the mean time they separated,

after mutually engaging that they would put themselves in a posture

of defence, would enlist men and purchase arms, and would supply their

castles with the necessary provisions.

{1215.} The barons appeared in London on the day appointed, and demanded

of the king, that, in consequence of his own oath before the primate,

as well as in deference to their just rights, he should grant them

a renewal of Henry’s charter, and a confirmation of the laws of St.

Edward. The king, alarmed with their zeal and unanimity, as well as with

their power, required a delay; promised that, at the festival of Easter,

he would give them a positive answer to their petition; and offered

them the archbishop of Canterbury, the bishop of Ely, and the earl

of Pembroke, the mareschal, as sureties for his fulfilling this

engagement.[***] The barons accepted of the terms, and peaceably

returned to their castles.

[* M. Paris, p. 175.]

[** M. Paris, p. 176,]

[*** M Paris, p 176. M. West. p. 273]

During this interval, John, in order to break or subdue the league of

his barons, endeavored to avail himself of the ecclesiastical power, of

whose influence he had, from his own recent misfortunes, had such fatal

experience. He granted to the clergy a charter, relinquishing forever

that important prerogative for which his father and all his ancestors

had zealously contended; yielding to them the free election on all

vacancies; reserving only the power to issue a conge d’élire and to

subjoin a confirmation of the election; and declaring that, if either of

these were withheld, the choice should nevertheless be deemed just

and valid.[*] He made a vow to lead an army into Palestine against the

infidels, and he took on him the cross, in hopes that he should receive

from the church that protection which she tendered to every one that had

entered into this sacred and meritorious engagement.[**] And he sent

to Rome his agent, William de Mauclere, in order to appeal to the pope

against the violence of his barons, and procure him a favorable sentence

from that powerful tribunal.[***] The barons, also, were not negligent

on their part in endeavoring to engage the pope in their interests: they

despatched Eustace de Vescie to Rome; laid their case before Innocent

as their feudal lord; and petitioned him to interpose his authority

with the king, and oblige him to restore and confirm all their just and

undoubted privileges.[****]

Innocent beheld with regret the disturbances which had arisen in

England, and was much inclined to favor John in his pretensions. He had

no hopes of retaining and extending his newly-acquired superiority over

that kingdom, but by supporting so base and degenerate a prince, who was

willing to sacrifice every consideration to his present safety: and he

foresaw, that if the administration should fall into the hands of those

gallant and high-spirited barons, they would vindicate the honor,

liberty, and independence of the nation, with the same ardor which they

now exerted in defence of their own. He wrote letters, therefore, to

the prelates, to the nobility, and to the king himself. He exhorted the

first to employ their good offices in conciliating peace between the

contending parties, and putting an end to civil discord: to the second

he expressed his disapprobation of their conduct in employing force to

extort concessions from their reluctant sovereign: the last lie advised

to treat his nobles with grace and indulgence, and to grant them such of

their demands as should appear just and reasonable.

[* Rymer, vol. i. p. 197.]

[** Rymer, vol. i. p. 200. Trivet, p. 162. T.

Wykes, p. 37. M West. p. 273.]

[*** Rymer, vol i. p. 184]

[**** Rymer, vol i. p. 184]

The barons easily saw, from the tenor of these letters, that they must

reckon on having the pope, as well as the king, for their adversary; but

they had already advanced too far to recede from their pretensions, and

their passions were so deeply engaged, that it exceeded even the power

of superstition itself any longer to control them. They also foresaw,

that the thunders of Rome, when not seconded by the efforts of the

English ecclesiastics, would be of small avail against them and they

perceived that the most considerable of the prelates, as well as all

the inferior clergy, professed the highest approbation of their cause.

Besides that these men were seized with the national passion for laws

and liberty, blessings of which they themselves expected to partake,

there concurred very powerful causes to loosen their devoted attachment

to the apostolic see. It appeared, from the late usurpations of the

Roman pontiff, that he pretended to reap alone all the advantages

accruing from that victory, which under his banners, though at their own

peril, they had every where obtained over the civil magistrate. The

pope assumed a despotic power over all the churches; their particular

customs, privileges, and immunities were treated with disdain; even the

canons of general councils were set aside by his dispensing power; the

whole administration of the church was centred in the court of Rome;

all preferments ran, of course, in the same channel; and the provincial

clergy saw, at least felt, that there was a necessity for limiting these

pretensions. The legate, Nicholas, in filling those numerous vacancies

which had fallen in England during an interdict of six years, had

proceeded in the most arbitrary manner; and had paid no regard, in

conferring dignities, to personal merit, to rank, to the inclination of

the electors, or to the customs of the country. The English church was

universally disgusted; and Langton himself, though he owed his elevation

to an encroachment of the Romish see, was no sooner established in his

high office, than he became jealous of the privileges annexed to it, and

formed attachments with the country subjected to his jurisdiction. These

causes, though they opened slowly the eyes of men, failed not to produce

their effect: they set bounds to the usurpations of the papacy; the tide

first stopped, and then turned against the sovereign pontiff; and it is

otherwise inconceivable, how that age, so prone to superstition, and so

sunk in ignorance, or rather so devoted to a spurious erudition, could

have escaped falling into an absolute and total slavery under the court

of Rome.

About the time that the pope’s letters arrived in England, The

malevolent barons, on the approach of the festival of Easter, when they

were to expect the king’s answer to their petition, met by agreement at

Stamford; and they assembled a force, consisting of above two thousand

knights, besides then retainers and inferior persons without number.

Elated with their power, they advanced in a body to Brackley, within

fifteen miles of Oxford, the place where the court then resided; and

they there received a message from the king, by the archbishop of

Canterbury and the earl of Pembroke, desiring to know what those

liberties were which they so zealously challenged from their sovereign.

They delivered to these messengers a schedule, containing the chief

articles of their demands; which was no sooner shown to the king, than

he burst into a furious passion, and asked why the barons did not also

demand of him his kingdom; swearing that he would never grant them such

liberties as must reduce himself to slavery.[*]

No sooner were the confederated nobles informed of John’s reply, than

they chose Robert Fitz-Walter their general, whom they called “the

mareschal of the army of God and of holy church;” and they proceeded

without further ceremony to levy war upon the king. They besieged the

castle of Northampton during fifteen days, though without success:[**]

the gates of Bedford castle were willingly opened to them by William

Beauchamp, its owner: they advanced to Ware in their way to London,

where they held a correspondence with the principal citizens: they were

received without opposition into that capital: and finding now the great

superiority of their force, they issued proclamations, requiring the

other barons to join them, and menacing them, in case of refusal or

delay, with committing devastation on their houses and estates.[***] In

order to show what might be expected from their prosperous arms,

they made incursions from London, and laid waste the king’s parks and

palaces; and all the barons, who had hitherto carried the semblance

of supporting the royal party, were glad of this pretence for openly

joining a cause which they always had secretly favored. The king was

left at Odiham, in Hampshire, with a poor retinue of only seven knights;

and after trying several expedients to elude the blow, after offering to

refer all differences to the pope alone, or to eight barons, four to be

chosen by himself, and four by the confederates,[****] he found himself

at last obliged to submit at discretion.

[* M. Paris, p. 176.]

[** M. Paris, p. 177.]

[*** M. Paris, p. 177. ]

[**** Rymer, vol. i. p. 200.]

A conference between the king and the barons was appointed at Runnemede,

between Windsor and Staines; a place which has ever since been extremely

celebrated on account of this great event. The two parties encamped

apart, like open enemies; and after a debate of a few days, the king,

with a facility somewhat suspicious, signed and sealed the charter

which was required of him. This famous deed, commonly called the

_Great Charter_, either granted or secured very important liberties and

privileges to every order of men in the kingdom; to the clergy, to the

barons, and to the people.

The freedom of elections was secured to the clergy: the former charter

of the king was confirmed, by which the necessity of a royal conge

d’élire and confirmation was superseded: all check upon appeals to Rome

was removed, by the allowance granted every man to depart the kingdom

at pleasure: and the fines to be imposed on the clergy, for any offence,

were ordained to be proportional to their lay estates, not to their

ecclesiastical benefices.

The privileges granted to the barons were either abatements in the rigor

of the feudal law, or determinations in points which had been left

by that law, or had become, by practice, arbitrary and ambiguous. The

reliefs of heirs succeeding to a military fee were ascertained;

an earl’s and baron’s at a hundred marks, a knight’s at a hundred

shillings. It was ordained by the charter that, if the heir be a minor,

he shall, immediately upon his majority, enter upon his estate, without

paying any relief: the king shall not sell his wardship; he shall levy

only reasonable profits upon the estate, without committing waste, or

hurting the property: he shall uphold the castles, houses, mills,

parks, and ponds, and if he commit the guardianship of the estate to the

sheriff or any other, he shall previously oblige them to find surety to

the same purpose. During the minority of a baron, while his lands are

in wardship, and are not in his own possession, no debt which he owes

to the Jews shall bear any interest. Heirs shall be married without

disparagement; and before the marriage be contracted, the nearest

relations of the person shall be informed of it. A widow, without paying

any relief, shall enter upon her dower, the third part of her husband’s

rents: she shall not be compelled to marry, so long as she chooses to

continue single; she shall only give security never to marry without her

lord’s consent. The king shall not claim the wardship of any minor who

holds lands by military tenure, of a baron, on pretence that he also

holds lands of the crown, by soccage or any other tenure. Scutages shall

be estimated at the same rate as in the time of Henry I.; and no scutage

or aid, except in the three general feudal cases, the king’s captivity,

the knighting of his eldest son, and the marrying of his eldest

daughter, shall be imposed but by the great council of the kingdom;

the prelates, earls, and great barons, shall be called to this great

council, each by a particular writ; the lesser barons by a general

summons of the sheriff. The king shall not seize any baron’s land for a

debt to the crown if the baron possesses as many goods and chattels as

are sufficient to discharge the debt. No man shall be obliged to perform

more service for his fee than he is bound to by his tenure. No governor

or constable of a castle shall oblige any knight to give money for

castle guard, if the knight be willing to perform the service in

person, or by another able-bodied man; and if the knight be in the field

himself, by the king’s command, he shall be exempted from all other

service of this nature. No vassal shall be allowed to sell so much of

his land as to incapacitate himself from performing his service to his

lord.

These were the principal articles, calculated for the interest of

the barons; and had the charter contained nothing further, national

happiness and liberty had been very little promoted by it, as it would

only have tended to increase the power and independence of an order of

men who were already too powerful, and whose yoke might have become

more heavy on the people than even that of an absolute monarch. But the

barons, who alone drew and imposed on the prince this memorable charter,

were necessitated to insert in it other claused of a more extensive and

more beneficent nature: they could not expect the concurrence of the

people without comprehending, together with their own, the interest of

inferior ranks of men; and all provisions, which the barons, for

their own sake, were obliged to make, in order to insure the free and

equitable administration of justice, tended directly to the benefit of

the whole community. The following were the principal clauses of this

nature.

It was ordained that all the privileges and immunities above mentioned,

granted to the barons against the king, should be extended by the barons

to their inferior vassals. The king bound himself not to grant any writ,

empowering a baron to levy aids from his vassals, except in the three

feudal cases. One weight and one measure shall be established throughout

the kingdom. Merchants shall be allowed to transact all business without

being exposed to any arbitrary tolls and impositions; they and all

free men shall be allowed to go out of the kingdom and return to it

at pleasure: London, and all cities and burghs, shall preserve their

ancient liberties, immunities, and free customs: aids shall not be

required of them but by the consent of the great council: no towns or

individuals shall be obliged to make or support bridges but by ancient

custom: the goods of every freeman shall he disposed of according to his

will: if he die intestate, his heirs shall succeed to them. No officer

of the crown shall take any horses, carts, or wood, without the consent

of the owner. The king’s courts of justice shall be stationary, and

shall no longer follow his person: they shall be open to every one; and

justice shall no longer be sold, refused, or delayed by them. Circuits

shall be regularly held every year: the inferior tribunals of justice,

the county court, sheriff’s turn, and court-leet shall meet at their

appointed time and place: the sheriffs shall be incapacitated to hold

pleas of the crown; and shall not put any person upon his trial, from

rumor or suspicion alone, but upon the evidence of lawful witnesses.

No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or dispossessed of his free

tenement and liberties, or outlawed, or banished, or anywise hurt or

injured, unless by the legal judgment of his peers, or by the law of the

land; and all who suffered otherwise in this or the two former reigns,

shall be restored to their rights and possessions. Every freeman shall

be fined in proportion to his fault; and no fine shall be levied on him

to his utter ruin; even a villain or rustic shall not by any fine be

bereaved of his carts, ploughs, and implements of husbandry. This was

the only article calculated for the interests of this body of men,

probably at that time the most numerous in the kingdom.

It must be confessed that the former articles of the Great Charter

contain such mitigations and explanations of the feudal law as are

reasonable and equitable; and that the latter involve all the chief

outlines of a legal government, and provide for the equal distribution

of justice, and free enjoyment of property; the great objects for which

political society was at first founded by men, which the people have

a perpetual and unalienable right to recall, and which no time, nor

precedent, nor statute, nor positive institution, ought to deter them

from keeping ever uppermost in their thoughts and attention. Though the

provisions made by this charter might, conformably to the genius of the

age, be esteemed too concise, and too bare of circumstances to maintain

the execution of its articles, in opposition to the chicanery of

lawyers, supported by the violence of power, time gradually ascertained

the sense of all the ambiguous expressions; and those generous barons,

who first extorted this concession, still held their swords in their

hands, and could turn them against those who dared, on any pretence, to

depart from the original spirit and meaning of the grant. We may now,

from the tenor of this charter, conjecture what those laws were of

King Edward which the English nation, during so many generations, still

desired, with such an obstinate perseverance, to have recalled and

established. They were chiefly these latter articles of Magna Charta;

and the barons who, at the beginning of these commotions, demanded

the revival of the Saxon laws, undoubtedly thought that they had

sufficiently satisfied the people by procuring them this concession,

which comprehended the principal objects to which they had so long

aspired. But what we are most to admire is, the prudence and moderation

of those haughty nobles themselves, who were enraged by injuries,

inflamed by opposition, and elated by a total victory over their

sovereign. They were content, even in this plenitude of power, to depart

from some articles of Henry I.’s charter, which they made the foundation

of their demands, particularly from the abolition of wardships, a matter

of the greatest importance; and they seem to have been sufficiently

careful not to diminish too far the power and revenue of the crown. If

they appear, therefore, to have carried other demands to too great

a height, it can be ascribed only to the faithless and tyrannical

character of the king himself, of which they had long had experience,

and which they foresaw would, if they provided no further security,

lead him soon to infringe their new liberties, and revoke his own

concessions. This alone gave birth to those other articles, seemingly

exorbitant, which were added as a rampart for the safeguard of the Great

Charter.

The barons obliged the king to agree that London should remain in their

hands, and the Tower be consigned to the custody of the primate,

till the 15th of August ensuing, or till the execution of the several

articles of the Great Charter. The better to insure the same end, he

allowed them to choose five-and-twenty members from their own body,

as conservators of the public liberties; and no bounds were set to the

authority of these men either in extent or duration. If any complaint

were made of a violation of the charter, whether attempted by the king,

justiciaries, sheriffs, or foresters, any four of these barons might

admonish the king to redress the grievance: if satisfaction were not

obtained, they could assemble the whole council of twenty-five; who,

in conjunction with the great council, were empowered to compel him to

observe the charter, and, in case of resistance, might levy war against

him, attack his castles, and employ every kind of violence, except

against his royal person, and that of his queen and children. All men

throughout the kingdom were bound, under the penalty of confiscation, to

swear obedience to the twenty-five barons; and the freeholders of each

county were to choose twelve knights, who were to make report of such

evil customs as required redress, conformably to the tenor of the Great

Charter.[*] The names of those conservators were, the earls of Clare,

Albemarle, Glocesteer, Winchester, Hereford, Roger Bigod, earl of

Norfolk, Robert de Vere, earl of Oxford, William Mareschal the younger,

Robert Fitz-Walter, Gilbert de Clare, Eustace de Vescey, Gilbert

Delaval, William de Moubray, Geoffrey de Say, Roger de Mombezon, William

de Huntingfield, Robert de Ros, the constable of Chester, William de

Aubenie, Richard de Perci, William Malet, John Fitz-Robert, William de

Lanvalay, Hugh de Bigod, and Roger de Montfichet. These men were, by

this convention, really invested with the sovereignty of the kingdom:

they were rendered coordinate with the king, or rather superior to him,

in the exercise of the executive power; and as there was no circumstance

of government which, either directly or indirectly, might not bear a

relation to the security or observance of the Great Charter, there could

scarcely occur any incident in which they might not lawfully interpose

their authority.

[* This seems a very strong proof that the house

of commons was not then in being; otherwise the knights and

burgesses from the several counties could have given in to

the lords a list of grievances, without so unusual an

election.]

John seemed to submit passively to all these regulations, however

injurious to majesty: he sent writs to all the sheriffs, ordering them

to constrain every one to swear obedience to the twenty-five barons: he

dismissed all his foreign force; he pretended, that his government was

thenceforth to run in a new tenor, and be more indulgent to the liberty

and independence of his people. But he only dissembled till he should

find a favorable opportunity for annulling all his concessions. The

injuries and indignities which he had formerly suffered from the pope

and the king of France, as they came from equals or superiors, seemed

to make but small impression on him; but the sense of this perpetual

and total subjection under his own rebellious vassals, sunk deep in his

mind; and he was determined, at all hazards, to throw off so ignominious

a slavery. He grew sullen, silent, and reserved: he shunned the society

of his courtiers and nobles: he retired into the Isle of Wight, as

if desirous of hiding his shame and confusion; but in this retreat he

meditated the most fatal vengeance against all his enemies. He secretly

sent abroad his emissaries to enlist foreign soldiers, and to invite the

rapacious Brabançons into his service, by the prospect of sharing

the spoils of England, and reaping the forfeitures of so many opulent

barons, who had incurred the guilt of rebellion, by rising in arms

against him. And he despatched a messenger to Rome, in order to lay

before the pope the Great Charter, which he had been compelled to sign,

and to complain, before that tribunal, of the violence which had been

imposed upon him.

Innocent, considering himself as feudal lord of the kingdom, was

incensed at the temerity of the barons, who, though they pretended to

appeal to his authority, had dared, without waiting for his consent, to

impose such terms on a prince, who, by resigning to the Roman pontiff

his crown and independence, had placed himself immediately under the

papal protection. He issued, therefore, a bull, in which, from the

plenitude of his apostolic power, and from the authority which God had

committed to him, to build and destroy kingdoms, to plant and overthrow,

he annulled and abrogated the whole charter, as unjust in itself,

as obtained by compulsion, and as derogatory to the dignity of the

apostolic see. He prohibited the barons from exacting the observance of

it: he even prohibited the king himself from paying any regard to it:

he absolved him and his subjects from all oaths which they had been

constrained to take to that purpose; and he pronounced a general

sentence of excommunication against every one who should persevere in

maintaining such treasonable and iniquitous pretensions.

The king, as his foreign forces arrived along with this bull now

ventured to take off the mask; and, under sanction of the pope’s decree,

recalled all the liberties which he had granted to his subjects, and

which he had solemnly sworn to observe. But the spiritual weapon was

found upon trial to carry less force with it than he had reason from

his own experience to apprehend. The primate refused to obey the pope

in publishing the sentence of excommunication against the barons; and

though he was cited to Rome, that he might attend a general council

there assembled, and was suspended, on account of his disobedience to

the pope, and his secret correspondence with the king’s enemies; though

a new and particular sentence of excommunication was pronounced by name

against the principal barons; John still found that his nobility and

people, and even his clergy, adhered to the defence of their liberties,

and to their combination against him: the sword of his foreign

mercenaries was all he had to trust to for restoring his authority.

The barons, after obtaining the Great Charter, seem to have been lulled

into a fatal security, and to have taken no rational measures, in case

of the introduction of a foreign force, for reassembling their armies.

The king was, from the first, master of the field; and immediately laid

siege to the castle of Rochester, which was obstinately defended by

William de Albiney, at the head of a hundred and forty knights with

their retainers, but was at last, reduced by famine. John, irritated

with the resistance, intended to have hanged the governor and all the

garrison; but on the representation of William de Mauleon, who suggested

to him the danger of reprisals, he was content to sacrifice, in this

barbarous manner, the inferior prisoners only. The captivity of William

de Albiney, the best officer among the confederated barons, was

an irreparable loss to their cause; and no regular opposition was

thenceforth made to the progress of the royal arms. The ravenous and

barbarous mercenaries, incited by a cruel and enraged prince were let

loose against the estates, tenants, manors, houses, parks of the barons,

and spread devastation over the face of the kingdom. Nothing was to

be seen but the flames of villages, and castles reduced to ashes, the

consternation and misery of the inhabitants, tortures exercised by the

soldiery to make them reveal their concealed treasures, and reprisals no

less barbarous, committed by the barons and their partisans on the royal

demesnes, and on the estates of such as still adhered to the crown.

The king, marching through the whole extent of England, from Dover to

Berwick, laid the provinces waste on each side of him; and considered

every estate, which was not his immediate property, as entirely hostile,

and the object of military execution. The nobility of the north in

particular, who had shown greatest violence in the recovery of their

liberties, and who, acting in a separate body, had expressed their

discontent even at the concessions made by the Great Charter, as they

could expect no mercy, fled before him with their wives and families,

and purchased the friendship of Alexander, the young king of Scots, by

doing homage to him.

The barons, reduced to this desperate extremity, and menaced with

the total loss of their liberties, their properties, and their lives,

employed a remedy no less desperate; and making applications to the

court of France, they offered to acknowledge Lewis, the eldest son of

Philip, for their sovereign, on condition that he would afford them

protection from the violence of their enraged prince. Though the sense

of the common rights of mankind, the only rights that are entirely

indefeasible, might have justified them in the deposition of their king,

they declined insisting before Philip on a pretension which is commonly

so disagreeable to sovereigns, and which sounds harshly in their royal

ears. They affirmed that John was incapable of succeeding to the crown,

by reason of the attainder passed upon him during his brother’s reign;

though that attainder had been reversed, and Richard had even, by his

last will, declared him his successor. They pretended, that he was

already legally deposed by sentence of the peers of France, on account

of the murder of his nephew; though that sentence could not possibly

regard any thing but his transmarine dominions, which alone he held in

vassalage to that crown. On more plausible grounds, they affirmed, that

he had already deposed himself by doing homage to the pope, changing the

nature of his sovereignty, and resigning an independent crown for a fee

under a foreign power. And as Blanche of Castile, the wife of Lewis,

was descended by her mother from Henry II., they maintained, though many

other princes stood before her in the order of succession, that they

had not shaken off the royal family, in choosing her husband for their

sovereign.

Philip was strongly tempted to lay hold on the rich prize which

was offered to him. The legate menaced him with interdicts and

excommunications, if he invaded the patrimony of St. Peter, or attacked

a prince who was under the immediate protection of the holy see; but as

Philip was assured of the obedience of his own vassals, his principles

were changed with the times, and he now undervalued as much all papal

censures, as he formerly pretended to pay respect to them. His chief

scruple was with regard to the fidelity which he might expect from the

English barons in their new engagements, and the danger of intrusting

his son and heir into the hands of men who might, on any caprice or

necessity, make peace with their native sovereign, by sacrificing

a pledge of so much value. He therefore exacted from the barons

twenty-five hostages of the most noble birth in the kingdom; and having

obtained this security, he sent over first a small army to the relief

of the confederates; then more numerous forces, which arrived with Lewis

himself at their head.

The first effect of the young prince’s appearance in England was

the desertion of John’s foreign troops, who, being mostly levied in

Flanders, and other provinces of France, refused to serve against the

heir of their monarchy. The Gascons and Poictevins alone, who were

still John’s subjects, adhered to his cause; but they were too weak to

maintain that superiority in the field which they had hitherto supported

against the confederated barons. Many considerable noblemen deserted

John’s party, the earls of Salisbury, Arundel, Warrenne, Oxford,

Albemarle, and William Mareschal the younger: his castles fell daily

into the hands of the enemy; Dover was the only place which, from the

valor and fidelity of Hubert de Burgh, the governor, made resistance

to the progress of Lewis; and the barons had the melancholy prospect

of finally succeeding in their purpose, and of escaping the tyranny of

their own king, by imposing on themselves and the nation a foreign yoke.

But this union was of short duration between the French and English

nobles; and the imprudence of Lewis, who on every occasion showed too

visible a preference to the former, increased that jealousy which it was

so natural for the latter to entertain in their present situation. The

viscount of Melun, too, it is said, one of his courtiers, fell sick at

London; and finding the approaches of death, he sent for some of his

friends among the English barons, and warning them of their danger,

revealed Lewis’s secret intentions of exterminating them and their

families as traitors to their prince, and of bestowing their estates

and dignities on his native subjects, in whose fidelity he could more

reasonably place confidence. This story, whether true or false,

was universally reported and believed; and, concurring with other

circumstances, which rendered it credible, did great prejudice to the

cause of Lewis. The earl of Salisbury and other noblemen deserted

again to John’s party; and as men easily change sides in a civil war,

especially where their power is founded on an hereditary and independent

authority, and is not derived from the opinion and favor of the people,

the French prince had reason to dread a sudden reverse of fortune. The

king was assembling a considerable army, with a view of fighting one

great battle for his crown; but passing from Lynne to Lincolnshire, his

road lay along the sea-shore, which was overflowed at high water; and

not choosing the proper time for his journey, he lost in the inundation

all his carriages, treasure, baggage, and regalia. The affliction for

this disaster, and vexation from the distracted state of his affairs,

increased the sickness under which he then labored; and though he

reached the castle of Newark, he was obliged to halt there, and his

distemper soon after put an end to his life, in the forty-ninth year

of his age, and eighteenth of his reign; and freed the nation from

the dangers to which it was equally exposed by his success or by his

misfortunes.

The character of this prince is nothing but a complication of vices,

equally mean and odious; ruinous to himself and destructive to

his people. Cowardice, inactivity, folly, levity licentiousness,

ingratitude, treachery, tyranny, and cruelty all these qualities appear

too evidently in the several incidents of his life, to give us room to

suspect that the disagreeable picture has been anywise overcharged by

the prejudices of the ancient historians. It is hard to say whether his

conduct to his father, his brother, his nephew, or his subjects, was

most culpable; or whether his crimes, in these respects, were not even

exceeded by the baseness which appeared in his transactions with the

king of France, the pope, and the barons. His European dominions, when

they devolved to him by the death of his brother, were more extensive

than have ever, since his time, been ruled by any English monarch: but

he first lost by his misconduct the flourishing provinces in France, the

ancient patrimony of his family: he subjected his kingdom to a shameful

vassalage under the see of Rome: he saw the prerogatives of his crown

diminished by law, and still more reduced by faction; and he died at

last, when in danger of being totally expelled by a foreign power, and

of either ending his life miserably in prison, or seeking shelter as a

fugitive from the pursuit of his enemies.

The prejudices against this prince were so violent, that he was believed

to have sent an embassy to the Miramoulin, or emperor of Morocco, and

to have offered to change his religion and become Mahometan, in order to

purchase the protection of that monarch. But though this story is told

us, on plausible authority, by Matthew Paris,* it is in itself utterly

improbable; except that there is nothing so incredible but may be

believed to proceed from the folly and wickedness of John.

The monks throw great reproaches on this prince for his impiety, and

even infidelity; and as an instance of it, they tell us that, having

one day caught a very fat stag, he exclaimed, “How plump and well fed

is this animal! and yet I dare swear he never heard mass.” This sally of

wit upon the usual corpulency of the priests, more than all his enormous

crimes and iniquities, made him pass with them for an atheist.

John left two legitimate sons behind him, Henry, born on the first of

October, 1207, and now nine years of age; and Richard, born on the

sixth of January, 1209; and three daughters, Jane, afterwards married

to Alexander, king of Scots; Eleanor, married first to William Mareschal

the younger, earl of Pembroke, and then to Simon Mountfort earl of

Leicester; and Isabella, married to the emperor Frederic II. All these

children were born to him by Isabella of Angouleme, his second wife.

His illegitimate children were numerous; but none of them were anywise

distinguished.

It was this king who, in the ninth year of his reign, first gave by

charter to the city of London, the right of electing annually a mayor

out of its own body, an office which was till now held for life. He gave

the city also power to elect and remove its sheriffs at pleasure, and

its common-council men annually. London bridge was finished in this

reign: the former bridge was of wood. Maud, the empress, was the first

that built a stone bridge in England.

APPENDIX II.

THE FEUDAL AND ANGLO-NORMAN GOVERNMENT AND MANNERS.

The feudal law is the chief foundation both of the political government

and of the jurisprudence established by the Normans in England. Our

subject therefore requires that we should form a just idea of this law,

in order to explain the state, as well of that kingdom, as of all other

kingdoms of Europe, which during those ages were governed by similar

institutions. And though I am sensible that I must here repeat many

observations and reflections which have been communicated by others, yet

as every book, agreeably to the observation of a great historian, should

be as complete as possible within itself, and should never refer for

any thing material to other books, it will be necessary in this place

to deliver a short plan of that prodigious fabric, which for several

centuries preserved such a mixture of liberty and oppression, order and

anarchy, stability and revolution, as was never experienced in any other

age or any other part of the world.