degradation. Richard of the Lion-Heart had been cruel and unprincipled;
but the sharpness of his sword threw a sort of respectability over
the worst portions of his character. His practical talents, also, and
the romantic incidents of his life, his confinement, and even of his
death, lifted him out of the ordinary category of brutal and selfish
kings and converted a very ferocious warrior into a popular hero. But
John was hateful and contemptible in an equal degree. He deserted his
father, he deceived his brother, he murdered his nephew, he oppressed
his people. He had the pride that made enemies, and wanted the courage
to fight them. A knight without truth, a king without justice, a
Christian without faith,--all classes rebelled against him. Innocent
the Third scented from afar the advantage he might obtain from a
monarch whose nobility despised him and who was hated by his people.
And when John got up a quarrel about the nomination of an archbishop
to Canterbury, the Pope soon saw that though Langton was no à-Beckett,
still less was John a Henry the Second. A sentence of excommunication
was launched at the coward's head, and the crown of England offered to
Philip Augustus of France. Philip Augustus had the modesty to refuse
the splendid bribe, and contented himself with aiding to weaken a
throne he did not feel inclined to fill. It is characteristic of John,
that in the agonies of his fear, and of his desire to gain support
against his people, he hesitated between invoking the assistance of the
Miramolin of Morocco and the Pope of Rome. As good Mussulman with the
one as Christian with the other, he finally decided on Innocent, and
signed a solemn declaration of submission, making public resignation
of the crowns of England and Ireland "to the Apostles Peter and
Paul, to Innocent and his legitimate successors;" and, aided by the
blessings of these new masters, and by the enforced neutrality of
France, he was enabled to defeat his indignant nobles, and force them
for two years to wear the same chains of submission to Rome which
weighed upon himself. But in 1215 the patience of noble and peasant,
of bishop and priest, was utterly exhausted. [A.D. 1215.] John fled
on the first outburst of the collected storm, and thought himself
fortunate in stopping its violence by signing the Great Charter,
the written ratification of the liberties which had been conferred
by some of his predecessors, but whose chief authority was in the
traditions and customs of the land. This was not an overthrow of an
old constitution and the substitution of a new and different code, but
merely a formal recognition of the great and fundamental principles
on which only government can be carried on,--security of person and
property, and the just administration of equitable laws. All orders in
the State were comprehended in this national agreement. The Church was
delivered from the exactions of the king, and left to an undisturbed
intercourse on spiritual matters with her spiritual head. She was to
have perfect freedom of election to vacant benefices, and the king's
rapacity was guarded against by a clause reducing any fine he might
impose on an ecclesiastic to an accordance with his professional
income, and not with the extent of his lay possessions. The barons,
of course, took equal care of their own interests as they had shown
for those of the Church. They corrected many abuses from which they
suffered, in respect to their feudal obligations. They regulated the
fines and quit-rents on succession to their fiefs, the management of
crown wards, and the marriage of heiresses and widows. They insisted
also on the assemblage of a council of the great and lesser barons,
to consult for the general weal, and put some check on the disposal
of their lands by their tenants, in order to keep their vassals from
impoverishment and their military organization unimpaired. But when
church and aristocracy were thus protected from the tyranny of the
king, were the interests of the great mass of the people neglected?
This has sometimes been argued against the legislators of Runnymede,
but very unjustly; for as much attention was paid to the liberties
and immunities of the municipal corporations and of ordinary subjects
as to those of the prelates and lords. Every person had the right to
dispose of his property by will. No arbitrary tolls could be exacted of
merchants. All men might enter or leave the kingdom without restraint.
The courts of law were no longer to be stationary at Westminster, to
which complainants from Northumberland or Cornwall never could make
their way, but were to travel about, bringing justice to every man's
door. They were to be open to every one, and justice was to be neither
"sold, refused, nor delayed." Circuits were to be held every year. No
man was to be put on his trial from mere rumour, but on the evidence
of lawful witnesses. No sentence could be passed on a freeman except
by his peers in jury assembled. No fine could be imposed so exorbitant
as to ruin the culprit. But the bishops and clergy, the nobility and
their vassals, the corporations and freemen, were not the main bodies
of the State; and the framers of Magna Charta have been blamed for
neglecting the great majority of the population, which consisted of
serfs or villeins. This accusation is, however, not true, even with
respect to the words of the Charter; for it is expressly provided that
the carts and working-implements of that class of the people shall
not be seizable in satisfaction of a fine; and in its intention the
accusation is more untenable still; for although the reformers of 1215
had no design of granting new privileges to any hitherto-unprivileged
order and their work was limited to the legal re-establishment of
privileges which John had attempted to overthrow, the large and
liberal spirit of their declarations is shown by the notice they take
of the hitherto-unconsidered classes. For the protection accorded to
their ploughs and carts, which are specifically named in the Charter,
ratified at once their right to hold property,--the first condition of
personal freedom and independence,--and, by an analogy of reasoning,
restrained their more immediate masters from tyranny and injustice. It
could not be long before a man secured by the national voice in the
possession of one species of property extended his rights over every
thing else. If the law guaranteed him the plough he held, the cart he
drove, the spade he plied, why not the house he occupied, the little
field he cultivated? And if the poorest freeman walked abroad in the
pride of independence, because the baron could no longer insult him,
or the priest oppress him, or the king himself strip him of land and
gear, how could he deny the same blessings to his neighbour, the rustic
labourer, who was already master of cart and plough and was probably
richer and better fed than himself?
But a firmer barrier against the encroachments of kings and nobles
than the written words of Magna Charta was still required, and people
were not long in seeing how little to be trusted are legal forms when
the contracting parties are disposed to evade their obligations. John
indeed attempted, in the very year that saw his signature to the
Charter, to expunge his name from the obligatory deed by the plenary
power of the Pope. Innocent had no scruple in giving permission to
his English vassal to break the oath and swerve from his engagement.
But the English spirit was not so broken as the king's, and the
barons took the management of the country into their own hands. When
the experience of a few years of Henry the Third had shown them that
there was no improvement on the personal character of his predecessor,
they took effectual measures for the protection of all classes of the
people. Henry began his inglorious reign in 1216, and ended it in
1272. In those fifty-six years great changes took place, but all in an
upward direction, out of the darkness and unimpressionable stolidity
of previous ages. The dawn of a more intellectual period seemed at
hand, and already the ghosts of ignorance and oppression began to scent
the morning air. In 1264 an example was set by England which it would
have been well if all the other Western lands had followed, for by the
institution of a true House of Commons it laid the foundation for the
only possible liberal and improvable government,--the only government
which can derive its strength from the consent of the governed
legitimately expressed, and vary in its action and spirit with the
changes in the general mind. In cases of error or temporary delusion,
there is always left the most admirable machinery for retracing its
steps and rectifying what is wrong. In cases of universal approval and
unanimous exertion, there is no power, however skilfully wielded by
autocrats or despots, which can compare with the combined energy of a
whole and undivided people.
[A.D. 1226-1270.]
The contemporary of this Henry on the throne of France was the gentle
and honest Louis the Ninth. If those epithets do not sound so high as
the usual phraseology applied to kings, we are to consider how rare are
the examples either of honesty or gentleness among the rulers of that
time, and how difficult it was to possess or exercise those virtues.
But this gentle and honest king, who was scarcely raised in rank when
the Church had canonized him as a saint, achieved as great successes
by the mere strength of his character as other monarchs had done by
fire and sword. His love of justice enabled him to extend the royal
power over his contending vassals, who chose him as umpire of their
quarrels and continued to submit to him as their chief. He heard
the complaints of the lower orders of his people in person, sitting,
like the kings of the East, under the shade of a tree, and delivering
judgment solely on the merits of the case. His undoubted zeal on behalf
of his religion permitted him, without the accusation of heresy, to
put boundaries to the aggressions of the Church. He resisted its more
violent claims, and gave liberty to ecclesiastics as well as laymen,
who were equally interested in the curtailment of the Papal power. He
granted a great number of municipal charters, and published certain
Establishments, as they were called, which were improvements on the old
customs of the realm and were in a great measure founded on the Roman
law. The spirit of the time was popular progress; and both in France
and England great advances were made; deliberative national assemblies
took their rise,--in France, under the conscientious monarch, with the
full aid and influence of the royal authority, in England, under the
feeble and selfish Henry, by the necessity of gaining the aid of the
Commons against the Crown to the outraged and insulted nobility. In
both nations these assemblies bore for a long time very distinguishable
marks of their origin. The Parliaments of France, sprung from the
royal will, were little else than the recorders of the decrees of the
monarch; while the Parliaments of England, remembering their popular
origin, have always had a feeling of independence, and a tendency to
make rather hard bargains with our kings. Even before this time the
Great Council had occasionally opposed the exactions of the Crown; but
when the falsehood and avarice of Henry III. had excited the popular
odium, the barons of 1263, in noble emulation of their predecessors
of 1215, had risen in defence of the nation's liberties, and the last
hand was put to the building up of our present constitution, by the
summoning, "to consult on public affairs," of certain burgesses from
the towns, in addition to the prelates, knights, and freeholders
who had hitherto constituted the parliamentary body. But those
barons and tenants-in-chief attended in their own right, and were
altogether independent of the principle of election and representation.
[A.D. 1265.] The summons issued by Simon de Montfort (son of the
truculent hero of the Albigensian crusade, and brother-in-law of Henry)
invested with new privileges the already-enfranchised boroughs. From
this time the representatives of the Commons are always mentioned in
the history of parliaments; and although this proceeding of De Montfort
was only intended to strengthen his hands against his enemies, and,
after his temporary object was gained, was not designed to have any
further effect on the constitutional progress of our country, still,
the principle had been adopted, the example was set, and the right to
be represented in Parliament became one of the most valued privileges
of the enfranchised commons.
It is observable that this increase of civil freedom in the various
countries of Europe was almost in exact proportion to the diminution
of ecclesiastical power. It is equally observable that the weakening
of the priestly influence rapidly followed the infamous excesses
into which its intolerance and pride had hurried the princes and
other supporters of its claims. Never, indeed, had it appeared in so
palmy and flourishing a state as in the course of this century; and
yet the downward journey was begun. The devastation it carried into
Languedoc, and the depopulation of all those sunny regions near the
Mediterranean Sea--the crusades against the Saracens in Asia, to which
it sent the strength of Europe, and against the Moors in Africa, to
which it impelled the most obedient, and also, when his religious
passions were roused, the most relentless, of the Church's sons,
no other than St. Louis--and the submission of the Patriarchates of
Jerusalem and Alexandria to the Romish See--these and other victories
of the Church were succeeded, before the century closed, by a manifest
though silent insurrection against its spiritual domination. There
were many reasons for this. The inferior though still dignified clergy
in the different nations were alienated by the excessive exactions
of their foreign head. In France the submissive St. Louis was forced
to become the guardian of the privileges and income of the Gallican
Church. In England the number of Italian incumbents exceeded that of
the English-born; and in a few years the Pope managed to draw from the
Church and State an amount equal to fifteen millions of our present
coin. In Scotland, poorer and more proud, the king united himself to
his clergy and nobles, and would not permit the Romish exactors to
enter his dominions. The avarice and venality of Rome were repulsive
equally to priest and layman. The strong support, also, which hitherto
had arisen to the Holy See from the innumerable monks and friars,
could no longer be furnished by the depressed and vitiated communities
whom the coarsest of the common people despised for their sensuality
and vice. In earlier times the worldly pretensions of the secular
clergy were put to shame by the poverty and self-denial of the regular
orders. Their ascetic retirement, and fastings, and scourgings, had
recommended them to the peasantry round their monasteries, by the
contrast their peaceful lives presented to the pomp and self-indulgence
of bishops and priests. But now the character of the two classes was
greatly changed. The parson of the parish, when he was not an Italian
absentee, was an English clergyman, whose interests and feelings were
all in unison with those of his flock; the monks were an army of
mercenary marauders in the service of a foreign prince, advocating his
most unpopular demands and living in the ostentatious disregard of all
their vows. Even the lowest class of all, the thralls and villeins,
were not so much as before in favour of their tonsured brothers, who
had escaped the labours of the field by taking refuge in the abbey;
for Magna Charta had given the same protection against oppression to
themselves, and the enfranchisement of the boroughs had put power
into the hands of citizens and freemen, who would not be so apt to
abuse it as the martial baron or mitred prelate had been. The same
principles were at work in France; and when the newly-established
Franciscans and Dominicans were pointed to as restoring the purity and
abnegation of the monks of old, the time for belief in those virtues
being inherent, or even possible, in a cloister, was past, and little
effect was produced in favour of Rome by the bloodthirsty brotherhood
of the ferocious St. Dominic or the more amiable professions of the
half-witted St. Francis of Assisi. [A.D. 1272.] The tide, indeed,
had so completely turned after the commencement of the reign of
Edward the First, that the Churchmen, both in England and France,
preferred being taxed by their own Sovereign to being subjected to
the arbitrary exactions of the Pope. Edward gave them no exemption
from the obligation to support the expenses of the State in common
with all the other holders of property, and pressed, indeed, rather
more heavily upon the prelates and rich clergy than on the rest of the
contributors, as if to drive to a decision the question, to which of
the potentates--the Pope or the sovereign--tribute was lawfully due.
When this object was gained, a bull was let loose upon the sacrilegious
monarch by Boniface the Eighth, which positively forbids any member
of the priesthood to contribute to the national exchequer on any
occasion or emergency whatever. But the king made very light of the
papal authority when it stood between him and the revenues of his
crown, and the national clergy submitted to be taxed like other men.
In France the same discussion led to the same result. The Gallican and
English Churches asserted their liberties in a way which must have been
peculiarly gratifying to the kings,--namely, by subsidies to the Crown,
and disobedience to the fulminations of the Pope.
But no surer proof of the increased wisdom of mankind can be given
than the termination of the Crusades. Perhaps, indeed, it was found
that religious excitement could be combined with warlike distinction
by assaults on the unbelieving or disobedient at home. There seemed
little use in traversing the sea and toiling through the deserts of
Syria, when the same heavenly rewards were held out for a campaign
against the inhabitants of Languedoc and the valleys of the Alps.
Clearer views also of the political effect of those distant expeditions
in strengthening the hands of the Pope, who, as spiritual head of
Christendom, was _ex officio_ commander of the crusading armies, must
no doubt have occurred to the various potentates who found themselves
compelled to aid the very authority from whose arrogance they suffered
so much. The exhaustion of riches and decrease of population were
equally strong reasons for repose. But none of all these considerations
had the least effect on the simple and credulous mind of Louis the
Ninth. Resisting as he did the interference of the Pope in his
character of King of France, no one could yield more devoted submission
to the commands of the Holy Father when uttered to him in his character
of Christian knight. At an early age he vowed himself to the sacred
cause, and in the year 1248 the seventh and last crusade to the Holy
Land took its way from Aigues-Mortes and Marseilles, under the guidance
of the youthful King and the Princes of France. Disastrous to a more
pitiful degree than any of its predecessors, this expedition began its
course in Egypt by the conquest of Damietta, and from thenceforth sank
from misery to misery, till the army, surprised by the inundations
of the Nile, and hemmed in by the triumphant Mussulmans, surrendered
its arms, and the nobility of France, with its king at its head,
found itself the prisoner of Almohadam. An insurrection in a short
time deprived their conqueror of life and crown, and a treaty for the
payment of a great ransom set the captives free. Ashamed, perhaps,
to return to his own country, sighing for the crown of martyrdom,
zealous at all events for the privileges of a pilgrim, Louis betook
himself to Palestine, and, as he was bound by the convention not
to attack Jerusalem, he wasted four years in uselessly rebuilding
the fortifications of Ptolemais, and Sidon, and Jaffa, and only
embarked on his homeward voyage when the death of his mother and the
discontent of his subjects necessitated his return. [A.D. 1254.] After
an absence of six years, the enfeebled and exhausted king sat once more
in the chair of judgment, and gained all hearts by his generosity
and truth. Yet the old fire was not extinct. His oath was binding
still, and in 1270, girt with many a baron bold, and accompanied by
his brother, Charles of Anjou, and the gay Prince Edward of England,
he fixed the red cross upon his shoulder and led his army to the
sea-shore. The ships were all ready, but the destination of the war was
changed. A new power had established itself at Tunis, more hostile to
Christianity than the Moslem of Egypt, and nearer at hand. In an evil
hour the King was persuaded to attack the Tunisian Caliph. He landed
at Carthage, and besieged the capital of the new dominion. But Tunis
witnessed the death of its besieger, for Louis, worn out with fatigue
and broken with disappointment, was stricken by a contagious malady,
and expired with the courage of a hero and the pious resignation of a
Christian. With him the crusading spirit vanished from every heart.
All the Christian armies were withdrawn. The Knights-Hospitallers,
the Templars, the Teutonic Order, passed over to Cyprus, and left the
hallowed spots of sacred story to be profaned by the footsteps of the
Infidel. Asia and Europe henceforth pursued their separate courses; and
it was left to the present day to startle the nations of both quarters
of the world with the spectacle of a war about the possession of the
Holy Places.
The century which has the slaughter of the Albigenses, the Magna
Charta, the rise of the Commons, the termination of the Crusades, to
distinguish it, will not need other features to be pointed out in
order to abide in our memories. Yet the reign of Edward the First,
the greatest of our early kings, must be dwelt on a little longer, as
it would not be fair to omit the personal merits of a man who united
the virtues of a legislator to those of a warrior. Whether it was
the prompting of ambition, or a far-sighted policy, which led him to
attempt the conquest of Scotland, we need not stop to inquire. It
might have satisfied the longings both of policy and ambition if he
had succeeded in creating a compact and irresistible Great Britain
out of England harassed and Scotland insecure. And if, contented with
his undivided kingdom, he had devoted himself uninterruptedly to the
introduction and consolidation of excellent laws, and had extended the
ameliorations he introduced in England to the northern portion of his
dominions, he would have earned a wider fame than the sword has given
him, and would have been received with blessings as the Justinian of
the whole island, instead of establishing a rankling hatred in the
bosoms of one of the cognate peoples which it took many centuries to
allay, if, indeed, it is altogether obliterated at the present time;
for there are not wanting enthusiastic Scotchmen who show considerable
wrath when treating of his assumptions of superiority over their
country and his interference with their national affairs.
Edward's sister had been the wife of Alexander the Third of Scotland.
Two sons of that marriage had died, and the only other child, a
daughter, had married Eric the Norwegian. In Margaret, the daughter of
this king, the Scottish succession lay, and when her grandfather died
in 1290, the Scottish states sent a squadron to bring the young queen
home, and great preparations were made for the reception of the "Maid
of Norway." But the Maid of Norway was weak in health; the voyage was
tempestuous and long; and weary and exhausted she landed on one of the
Orkney Islands, and in a short time a rumour went round the land that
the hope of Scotland was dead. Edward was among the first to learn
the melancholy news. He determined to assert his rights, and began
by trying to extend the feudal homage which several of the Scottish
kings had rendered for lands held in England, over the Scottish crown
itself. When the various competitors for the vacant throne submitted
their pretensions to his decision he made their acknowledgment of
his supremacy an indispensable condition. Out of the three chief
candidates he fixed on John Baliol, who, in addition to the most legal
title, had perhaps the equal recommendation of being the feeblest
personal character. Robert Bruce and Hastings, the other candidates,
submitted to their disappointment, and Baliol became the mere viceroy
of the English king. He obeyed a summons to Westminster as a vassal
of Edward, to answer for his conduct, and was treated with disdain.
[A.D. 1293.] But the Scottish barons had more spirit than their king.
They forced him to resist the pretensions of his overbearing patron,
and for the first time, in 1295, began the long connection between
France and Scotland by a treaty concluded between the French monarch
and the twelve Guardians of Scotland, to whom Baliol had delegated his
authority before retiring forever to more peaceful scenes. From this
time we find that, whenever war was declared by France on England,
Scotland was let loose on it to distract its attention, in the same way
as, whenever war was declared upon France, the hostility of Flanders
was roused against its neighbour. But the benefits bestowed by England
on her Low Country ally were far greater than any advantage which
France could offer to Scotland. Facilities of trade and favourable
tariffs bound the men of Ghent and Bruges to the interests of Edward.
But the friendship of France was limited to a few bribes and the loan
of a few soldiers. Scotland, therefore, became impoverished by her
alliance, while Flanders grew fat on the liberality of her powerful
friend. England itself derived no small benefit both from the hostility
of Scotland and the alliance of the Flemings. When the Northern army
was strong, and the King was hard pressed by the great Wallace, the
sagacious Parliament exacted concessions and immunities from its
imperious lord before it came liberally to his aid; and whenever we
read in one page of a check to the arms of Edward, we read in the next
of an enlargement of the popular rights. When the first glow of the
apparent conquest of Scotland was past, and the nation was seen rising
under the Knight of Elderslie after it had been deserted by its natural
leaders, the lords and barons,--and, later, when in 1297 he gained a
great victory over the English at Stirling,--the English Parliament
lost no time in availing themselves of the defeat, and sent over to the
king, who was at the moment in Flanders menacing the flanks of France,
a parchment for his signature, containing the most ample ratification
of their power of granting or withholding the supplies. It was on
the 10th of October, 1297, that this important document was signed;
and, satisfied with this assurance of their privileges, the "nobles,
knights of the shire, and burgesses of England in parliament assembled"
voted the necessary funds to enable their sovereign lord to punish his
rebels in Scotland. Perhaps these contests between the sister countries
deepened the patriotic feeling of each, and prepared them, at a later
day, to throw their separate and even hostile triumphs into the united
stock, so that, as Charles Knight says in his admirable "Popular
History," "the Englishman who now reads of the deeds of Wallace and
Bruce, or hears the stirring words of one of the noblest lyrics of
any tongue, feels that the call to 'lay the proud usurper low' is one
which stirs his blood as much as that of the born Scotsman; for the
small distinctions of locality have vanished, and the great universal
sympathies for the brave and the oppressed stay not to ask whether the
battle for freedom was fought on the banks of the Thames or of the
Forth. The mightiest schemes of despotism speedily perish. The union
of nations is accomplished only by a slow but secure establishment of
mutual interests and equal rights."
FOURTEENTH CENTURY.
Emperors of Germany.
A.D.
ALBERT.--(_cont._)
1308. HENRY VII., (of Luxemburg.)
1314. LOUIS IV., (of Bavaria). } Rival
1314. FREDERICK III., (of Austria,) died 1330. } Emperors
1347. CHARLES IV., (of Luxemburg.)
1378. WENCESLAS, (of Bohemia.)
Kings of France.
A.D.
PHILIP IV.--(_cont._)
1314. LOUIS X., (Hutin.)
1316. PHILIP V., (the Long.)
1322. CHARLES IV., (the Handsome.)
1328. PHILIP VI.
1350. JOHN II., (the Good.)
1364. CHARLES V., (the Wise.)
1380. CHARLES VI., (the Beloved.)
Emperors of the East.
A.D.
ANDRONICUS II.--(_cont._)
1332. ANDRONICUS III.
1341. JOHN PALÆOLOGUS.
1347. JOHN CANTACUZENUS.
1355. JOHN PALÆOLOGUS, (restored.)
1391. MANUEL PALÆOLOGUS.
Kings of England.
A.D.
EDWARD I.--(_cont._)
1307. EDWARD II.