shadow of doubt in men’s minds that here was one who was a martyr as
fully as any martyr of the catacombs and the Roman persecutions.” (R.
H. Benson, _St. Thomas of Canterbury_.) Countless miracles were alleged
to prove the sanctity of the dead hero, and pilgrims from all parts
made their way to the shrine of the “blessful martyr” at Canterbury.
Not only in England, but in France and Flanders, and particularly in
Ireland was there an outburst of devotion to St. Thomas.
The shrine at Canterbury was destroyed by Henry VIII., who after a mock
trial of the archbishop slain more than 300 years earlier, declared
that “Thomas, sometime Archbishop of Canterbury, had been guilty of
contumacy, treason and rebellion,” and “was no saint, but rather a
rebel and traitor to his prince.”
But though Thomas, canonised by the pope on the prayers of the people
of England, could be struck out of the calendar of the Church of
England by the arbitrary will of King Henry VIII., as an enemy of
princes, and his shrine destroyed, it is beyond the power of a king
to reverse the sentence of history or to blast for ever the fame of
a great and courageous champion of the poor of this land. Time makes
little of the insults of Henry VIII. Thomas of Canterbury died for the
religion that in his day protected the people against the despotism of
the crown. “He was always a hater of liars and slanderers and a kind
friend to dumb beasts (hence his rage with De Broc for mutilating a
horse) and all poor and helpless folk.” (F. York Powell.)
That Henry II. strove to make law predominant in the spirit of a great
statesman is as true as that Thomas strove to mitigate the harshness of
the law. As a writer of the twelfth century put it: “Nothing is more
certain than that both strove earnestly to do the will of God, one for
the sake of his realm, the other on behalf of his Church. But whether
of the two was zealous in wisdom is not plain to man, who is so easily
mistaken, but to the Lord, who will judge between them at the last
day.”
William FitzOsbert, called Longbeard
The First English Agitator
1196
AUTHORITIES: Roger of Hoveden; William of Newburgh; Gervase of
Canterbury; Matthew Paris; Ralph Diceto; (Rolls Series); _Rotuli Curiæ
Regis_ (Sir F. Palgrave. Vol. I.).
WILLIAM FITZOSBERT CALLED LONGBEARD, THE FIRST ENGLISH AGITATOR
1196
When Richard I., on his accession, picked out Hubert Walter, Bishop
of Salisbury, to be Archbishop of Canterbury, he chose a prelate whom
he could rely upon as his representative. Hubert had been a crusader;
he was the nephew of Ralph Glanville--who sold the justiciarship to
William Longchamp, Bishop of Ely, for £3,000, and followed Richard to
Palestine, dying of the plague at Acre in 1191--and though a man of
little learning he was a capital lawyer, a strong administrator and
expert at raising money for the king.[21] Hubert was no champion of
the poor as St. Thomas had been, no preacher of righteousness like St.
Anselm, no stickler for the rights of the Church or the liberties of
the people; he was “the king’s man,” and “forasmuch as he was neither
gifted with a knowledge of letters nor endued with the grace of lively
religion, so in his days the Church of England was stifled under the
yoke of bondage.” (Geraldus Cambrensis.)
Richard Cœur de Lion, occupied with the crusades, had no mind for the
personal government of England. He depended on his ministers for money
to pay for his military expeditions to Palestine. England was to him
nothing more than a subject province to be bled by taxation. Both
William Longchamp and Hubert Walter--to whom Richard committed the
realm when he left England for good in 1194--did all that could be done
to meet the king’s demands. Government offices, earldoms and bishoprics
were sold to the highest bidder.[22] Judges bought their seats on the
bench and cities bought their charters. Crown lands already granted to
tenants were again taken up by the king’s authority, and the occupier
compelled to pay for readmission to his holding. Tournaments were
revived, because everyone taking part was obliged to take a royal
license. Even the great seal was broken by the justiciar’s authority,
and all documents signed by it had to be reissued, with the payment
of the usual fees (or stamp duties) for new contracts. “By these and
similar inquisitions England was reduced to poverty from one sea to the
other,” for more than £1,000,000 was sent to Richard by Hubert in the
first two years of his justiciarship.
The only protest against the general distress came from London, and not
from the aldermen or burghers, but from the voteless labouring people
upon whom the whole burden of raising the city’s taxes had been thrown.
Against this monstrous injustice William Longbeard FitzOsbert stood
out as the spokesman of the poor of London, and died a martyr for
their cause.
London’s political importance had been seen in the struggles against
King Cnut and William the Conqueror. Its remarkable influence in
national politics (an influence that endured to the middle of the
nineteenth century) was manifest when London acclaimed Stephen as King
of England in 1135. At the close of the twelfth century, London, with
the civic charter it had just obtained from Richard, with its thirteen
convent churches and more than a hundred parish churches within its
boundaries, with its great cattle market at Smithfield and its growing
riverside trade, was already prosperous and overcrowded. “The city was
blessed with the healthiness of the air and the nature of its site, in
the Christian religion, in the strength of its towers, the honour of
its citizens and the purity of its women; it was happy in its sports
and fruitful of high spirited men.” It had its darker side, but at that
time “the only plagues were the intemperate drinking of foolish people
and the frequent fires.”
Richard’s charter left to the citizens the business of assessing their
own taxes, and in 1196 there was trouble over this matter; for in
that year the city fathers decided that the large sums required by
Archbishop Hubert for the king’s needs should be paid in full by the
poorer craftsmen and labourers, who had no say in the matter.[23]
“And when the aldermen assembled according to usage in full hustings
for the purpose of assessing the taxes, the rulers endeavoured to spare
their own purses and to levy the whole from the poor.” (Roger of
Hoveden.)
Whereupon up rose William Longbeard, the son of Osbert, and made his
memorable protest against these rascally proceedings, to go down to
history as the first popular agitator in England.
An exceptional man was this Longbeard, a man of commanding stature and
great strength, ready witted, something of an orator and a lawyer, who
“burning with zeal for righteousness and fair play made himself the
champion of the poor,” holding that every man, rich or poor, should pay
his share of the city’s burdens according to his means.
Longbeard was not of the labouring people himself. He was a member of
the city council, though by no means a rich man. He had distinguished
himself as a crusader in 1190, making the journey to Portugal against
the Moors; and a vision of St. Thomas Becket had appeared to him and
his fellow Londoners when their ship was beset by storms off the coast
of Spain.
Longbeard was known to the king, and he was already hateful to the
ruling class because he had declared that Richard was being defrauded
by financial corruption of the money raised for the crown. He had also
accused his brother of treason in 1194, but the case was not proved.
Richard was in Normandy in 1196, and Longbeard having banded together
15,000 men in London, under an oath that they would stick by him and
each other, went to the king and laid their grievances before him.
Richard heard the appeal sympathetically enough, for after all, as
long as the money was forthcoming, he had no particular desire that
the pockets of rich burghers should be spared at the expense of the
poor, but left matters in the hands of Archbishop Hubert the justiciar.
Longbeard returned to London, and with his 15,000[24] workmen in
revolt, bid an open defiance to the justiciar.
Only a fragment of one of Longbeard’s speeches has been preserved, a
solitary specimen of popular oratory in the twelfth century.[25]
Taking a passage from the prophet Isaiah for his text: “Therefore with
joy shall ye draw water from the wells of the Saviour” (Isaiah xii, 3),
the agitator delivers his message.
“I am,” he saith, “the saviour of the poor. You the poor, who have
endured the hard hands of the rich, draw ye from my wells the waters of
sound doctrine, and this with joy, for the time of your visitation is
at hand. For I will divide the waters from the waters, and the People
are the waters. I will divide the humble and faithful from such as are
proud and froward. I will divide the just from the unjust, even as
light from darkness.”
For a time Longbeard was too strong for the justiciar. Archbishop
Hubert had no force at his disposal for the invasion of London, for a
battle with Longbeard and his league.
At a great gathering of citizens, held in St. Paul’s Churchyard, the
justiciar’s men sent to arrest Longbeard had been driven out of the
city with violence. All that Hubert could do was to give orders for
the arrest of any lesser citizens found outside London, and two small
traders from the city actually were taken into custody at the town of
Stamford on Mid-Lent Sunday, 1196, under this authority.
But the aldermen grew more and more frightened at Longbeard’s bold
speeches and his big public meetings, and weakness and cowardice began
to demoralise the league. The people, who had risen for “liberty and
freedom,” fell away from their leader, and FitzOsbert was left with a
comparatively small band to face the anger of the justiciar.
Backed up by the city fathers, Hubert’s officers again attempted to
seize the agitator. Longbeard, hardly pressed, snatched an axe from
one of his assailants--a citizen named Godfrey--and slew him; and then
retreated, overwhelmed by numbers, to take refuge in the church of
St. Mary-le-Bow in Cheapside. There was a right of sanctuary in this
church, a right not to be denied to the commonest felon.
But what were rights of sanctuary to the justiciar--bent on hunting his
prey to the death? He commanded Longbeard “to come out and abide by the
law,” and gave orders to his men that, failing instant obedience, he
was to be dragged out.
Longbeard’s answer was to climb up into the church tower, and thereupon
Hubert ordered the tower to be set on fire, and this was done. And now
the only chance of life for William Longbeard and his followers was to
cut their way through the host of their enemies and make a bold rush
for safety. It was a remote chance at the best, but sooner that than to
perish in the burning tower.
At the very church door Longbeard was struck down--some say by
Godfrey’s son--and his little company were quickly slain or taken
prisoners. Loaded with chains, the once bold advocate of the poor of
London, now badly hurt, was at once haled off to the Tower. Sentence
was pronounced without delay of the law, William, the son of Osbert,
was to be dragged to the elms at Tyburn and there hanged in chains.
A few days later--it was just before Easter--the wounded man was
stripped naked, tried to the tail of a horse and dragged over the rough
stones of the streets of London. He was dead before Tyburn was reached,
but the poor broken body, on whom the full vengeance of the rich and
mighty had been wreaked, was strung up in chains beneath the gallows
elm all the same. Bravely had Longbeard withstood the rulers of the
land in the day of his strength; now, when life had passed from him,
his body was swinging in common contempt. And with him were nine of his
followers hanged.
So died William, called Longbeard, son of Osbert, “for asserting the
truth and maintaining the cause of the poor.” And since it is held that
to be faithful to such a cause makes a man a martyr, people thought he
deserved to be ranked with the martyrs. For a time multitudes--the very
folk who had fallen away from their champion in the hour of battle and
need--flocked to pay reverence to the ghastly, bloodstained corpse that
hung at Tyburn, and pieces of the gibbet and of the bloodstained earth
beneath were carried off and counted as sacred relics. All the great,
heroic qualities of the man were recalled. He was accounted a saint.
Miracles were alleged to take place when his relics were touched.
Then the dead man’s enemies were aroused, an alleged death-bed
confession was published, wherein Longbeard was made out to be a sorry
criminal. Not the least of the offences laid to his charge was that a
woman, who was not his wife, had stood faithfully by the rebel, even
when the church was on fire.
The times were rough. It is probable that Longbeard, crusader and
fighting man, had sins enough to confess before death took him. But
his traducers were silent as to these sins in the man’s lifetime. They
waited until no answer could be given before uttering their miserable
libels against the one courageous champion of the poor.
Longbeard had roused the common working people to make a stand against
obvious oppression and injustice--there was the head and front of his
offending, there was his crime; earning for him not only a felon’s
death, but the loss of character, and the branding for all time with
the contemptuous title “Demagogue.”
Yet in the slow building up of English liberties William FitzOsbert
played his part, and laid down his life in the age-long struggle for
freedom, as many a better has done.
In 1198, two years after the death of Longbeard, Hubert was compelled
to resign the justiciarship. His monks at Canterbury, to whom the
Church of St. Mary, in Cheapside, belonged, and who had no love for
their archbishop,[26] indignant at the violation of sanctuary and the
burning of their church, appealed to the king and to the pope, Innocent
III. to make Hubert give up his political activities and confine
himself to the work of an archbishop. In the same year a great council
of the nation, led by St. Hugh of Lincoln, flatly refused a royal
demand for money made by Hubert.
Innocent III. was against him, the great barons were against him, and
Hubert resigned. But he held the archbishopric till 1205.
Stephen Langton and the Great Charter
1207–1228
AUTHORITIES: Roger of Wendover and Matthew Paris; Walter of Coventry;
Ralph of Coggeshall (Rolls Series); _Letters of Innocent III._; Rymer’s
_Fœdera_; K. Norgate--_John Lackland_; Stubbs--_Select Charters_;
Mark Pattison--_Stephen Langton_ (Lives of the English Saints); C. E.
Maurice--_Stephen Langton_.
STEPHEN LANGTON AND THE GREAT CHARTER
1207–1228
When Hubert Walter, Archbishop of Canterbury--the old Justiciar of
Richard I.--ended his long life of public service on July 12th, A.D.
1205, King John exclaimed, with frank satisfaction, “Now for the first
time I am King of England!” As long as Hubert was alive there was one
man strong enough to restrain the king, and the primate and William
the Marshall together had done something to guard England against the
foulest and most ruthless tyranny of all its kings. To the end William
the Marshall was a brave and patriotic statesman, but he served the
crown rather than the people.
On Hubert’s death John meant to have for archbishop a creature of
his will, and he was defeated by Pope Innocent III., who, dismissing
the appeal of the monks of Canterbury for Reginald, their subprior,
and John’s appeal for his nominee, John de Gray, Bishop of Norwich,
proposed the English-born Cardinal, Stephen Langton, “than whom there
was no man greater in the Roman court, nor was there any equal to
him in character and in learning.” The monks consented to Stephen’s
appointment, but John’s reply was a flat refusal, and when on June
7th, 1207, Pope Innocent proceeded to consecrate Stephen Langton
Archbishop of Canterbury, the king’s rage broke out. Innocent’s wise
judgment gave England one of its noblest and greatest archbishops, and
the service wrought by Langton for the liberties of England’s people
was of deep and lasting value. But the immediate price to be paid for
later profit was heavy.
John met Langton’s consecration by seizing the estates of Canterbury,
driving the chapter into exile, and proclaiming that anyone who
acknowledged Stephen as archbishop should be accounted a public enemy.
The remonstrances and warnings of the pope were disregarded, and in
March, 1208, all England was laid under an interdict, and there was
an end to the public ministrations of religion in the country for six
years--to the bitter distress of the common people.
Immediately the interdict came into force, John declared all the
property of the clergy, secular or monastic, to be confiscated, and
there was no one to stay his hand from speedy spoliation. For the
barons were willing enough to see the clergy robbed and the king’s
treasury filled at the expense of the Church, and of the bishops only
two were left in England--Peter des Roches, of Winchester, and John
de Gray, of Norwich--and both these were willing tools of the king.
Never did John enjoy his royal will and pleasure with such unhindered
ferocity as in that year 1209. Had the barons stood by the Church they
might have saved England unspeakable miseries, and as it was the laity
were soon in as sorry a plight as the clergy, “and it seemed as though
the king was courting the hatred of every class of his subjects, so
burdensome was he to both rich and poor.”[27]
In 1211 came Pandulf from Pope Innocent with suggestions for peace. Let
the king restore the property of the clergy, and receive Archbishop
Langton, with his kinsmen and friends, and the other exiled bishops
“fairly and in peace” and the interdict should be withdrawn. John
declined to receive Langton as archbishop, and Pandulf, in the presence
of the whole council, pronounced the papal sentence of excommunication
on the king, absolving all his subjects from allegiance, and commanding
their obedience to whomsoever should be sent as John’s successor.
John treated the excommunication with cheerful contempt, and pursued
the evil tenour of his way. But his position was precarious, for the
barons--especially the northern barons--were plotting his overthrow,
and the pope had decided that Philip of France should depose John and
reign in his stead. John was driven to capitulate to the pope at the
end of 1212, and in May, 1213, Pandulf arrived, and the invasion by
Philip was stopped, to the exceeding annoyance of the French king.
John met the papal legate at Ewell, near Dover, and in the presence
of “the great men of the realm,” swore to carry out all Innocent’s
demands, promising that Stephen should be received and recompense paid
to the clergy for their losses. Then the King of England formally
surrendered “to God and to the Holy Mother Church of Rome, and to Pope
Innocent and his Catholic successors,” the whole realm of England and
Ireland, “with all rights thereunto appertaining, to receive them back
and hold them thenceforth as a feudatory of God and the Roman Church.”
He swore fealty to the pope for both realms, and added that he would
send a yearly tribute of 1,000 marks. At the same time John declared
that the act of homage was voluntary, done, “not at the driving of
force nor the compulsion of fear, but of our own good free will and by
the common counsel of our barons.”
There is no evidence that the pope asked for this abject submission,
but there are good reasons why John desired that political protection
of the papacy which he obtained by the act of homage.[28] (Matthew
Paris has a story that John was willing to pay homage and tribute to
the Mohammedan Emir of Morocco in order to effect an alliance with some
foreign power.)
The barons themselves appealed to the pope two years later to take
their part against John, on the ground that it was only by their
compulsion the king had been brought to pay homage to Rome, and
though they were then to curse the papal overlordship they had helped
procure, and England was to come to regard John’s surrender to the
pope as “a thing to be detested for all time,” in that year 1213 the
protection of the pope was invaluable to John and, as some thought, to
the country. “For matters were in such a strait, and so great was the
fear on all sides, that there was no more ready way of avoiding the
imminent peril--perhaps no other way at all. For when once he had put
himself under apostolical protection and made his realms a part of the
patrimony of St. Peter, there was not in the Roman world a sovereign
who durst attack him or would invade his lands, in such awe was Pope
Innocent held above all his predecessors for many years past.” (Walter
of Coventry.)
The long war being at an end Stephen Langton and four of the exiled
bishops landed in June, and Stephen was now to do the work of
archbishop, the work he had been solemnly consecrated to six years
before.
John met the primate at Winchester, and swore on the gospels in
the cathedral “that he would cherish, defend and maintain the holy
Church and her ordained ministers; that he would restore the good
laws of his forefathers, especially St. Edward’s, rendering to all
men their rights; and that before the next Easter he would make full
restitution of all property which had been taken away in connection
with the interdict.” Then Stephen formally absolved the king from
excommunication and gave him the kiss of peace, to the general
rejoicing.
And now England was to see what sort of archbishop it was Pope Innocent
had sent to Canterbury. With a king as cruel as he was vigorous, and
as astute as he was unscrupulous, with barons who knew neither loyalty
nor patriotism. Archbishop Stephen, out of such materials, was to win
for his native land the Great Charter, and to have it written in black
and white that all who would might read the several duties of king and
people. In August Langton, in St. Paul’s Cathedral, read to the barons
the old coronation charter of Henry I., and reminded them that the
liberties promised in that document were to be recovered. “With very
great joy the barons swore they would fight for these liberties, even
unto death if it were needful, and the archbishop promised that he
would help with all his might.” Thus within three months of his setting
foot in England Langton had started the movement for the Great Charter.
But not with king and barons only had the archbishop to deal. There
were endless difficulties with the clergy concerning the restitution
of their property, and the payment of compensation to be settled. And
above all there was Nicholas, the papal legate, in England, usurping
the primate’s functions, filling up vacant bishoprics and churches,
regardless of the rights of the Church and of the archbishop. Nicholas
was recalled to Rome when the interdict was finally removed, and
in November, 1214, John made a public proclamation that free and
undisturbed election to all the churches in his realm should be allowed
henceforth. This was an attempt on the king’s part to have the Church
on his side against the barons, for the battle was beginning between
John and the barons which was to be fought to a bitter end.
John’s last campaign to recover the lost Angevine provinces for the
English crown ended in disaster, and he returned to England in 1214
to face the full discontent of the barons whom he had harassed and
insulted from the day he came to the throne, and of a country suffering
from “the evil customs which the king’s father and brother had raised
up for the oppression of the Church and realm, together with the abuses
which the king himself had added thereto.”