REIGN OF JOHN.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1199]
We are now arrived at one of the most memorable periods in the English
story, whether we consider the astonishing revolutions which were then
wrought, the calamities in which both the prince and people were
involved, or the happy consequences which, arising from the midst of
those calamities, have constituted the glory and prosperity of England
for so many years. We shall see a throne founded in arms, and augmented
by the successive policy of five able princes, at once shaken to its
foundations: first made tributary by the arts of a foreign power; then
limited, and almost overturned, by the violence of its subjects. We
shall see a king, to reduce his people to obedience, draw into his
territories a tumultuary foreign army, and destroy his country instead
of establishing his government. We shall behold the people, grown
desperate, call in another foreign army, with a foreign prince at its
head, and throw away that liberty which they had sacrificed everything
to preserve. We shall see the arms of this prince successful against an
established king in the vigor of his years, ebbing in the full tide of
their prosperity, and yielding to an infant: after this, peace and order
and liberty restored, the foreign force and foreign title purged off,
and all things settled as happily as beyond all hope.
Richard dying without lawful issue, the succession to his dominions
again became dubious. They consisted of various territories, governed by
various rules of descent, and all of them uncertain. There were two
competitors: the first was Prince John, youngest son of Henry the
Second; the other was Arthur, son of Constance of Bretagne, by Geoffrey,
the third son of that monarch. If the right of consanguinity were only
considered, the title of John to the whole succession had been
indubitable. If the right of representation had then prevailed, which
now universally prevails, Arthur, as standing in the place of his
father, Geoffrey, had a solid claim. About Brittany there was no
dispute. Anjou, Poitou, Touraine, and Guienne declared in favor of
Arthur, on the principle of representation. Normandy was entirely for
John. In England the point of law had never been entirely settled, but
it seemed rather inclined to the side of consanguinity. Therefore in
England, where this point was dubious at best, the claim of Arthur, an
infant and a stranger, had little force against the pretensions of John,
declared heir by the will of the late king, supported by his armies,
possessed of his treasures, and at the head of a powerful party. He
secured in his interests Hubert, Archbishop of Canterbury, and
Glanville, the chief justiciary, and by them the body of the
ecclesiastics and the law. It is remarkable, also, that he paid court to
the cities and boroughs, which is the first instance of that policy: but
several of these communities now happily began to emerge from their
slavery, and, taking advantage of the necessities and confusion of the
late reign, increased in wealth and consequence, and had then first
attained a free and regular form of administration. The towns new to
power declared heartily in favor of a prince who was willing to allow
that their declaration could confer a right. The nobility, who saw
themselves beset by the Church, the law, and the burghers, had taken no
measures, nor even a resolution, and therefore had nothing left but to
concur in acknowledging the title of John, whom they knew and hated. But
though they were not able to exclude him from the succession, they had
strength enough to oblige him to a solemn promise of restoring those
liberties and franchises which they had always claimed without having
ever enjoyed or even perfectly understood. The clergy also took
advantage of the badness of his title to establish one altogether as ill
founded. Hubert, Archbishop of Canterbury, in the speech which he
delivered at the king's coronation, publicly affirmed that the crown of
England was of right elective. He drew his examples in support of this
doctrine, not from the histories of the ancient Saxon kings, although a
species of election within a certain family had then frequently
prevailed, but from the history of the first kings of the Jews: without
doubt in order to revive those pretensions which the clergy first set up
in the election of Stephen, and which they had since been obliged to
conceal, but had not entirely forgotten.
John accepted a sovereignty weakened in the very act by which he
acquired it; but he submitted to the times. He came to the throne at the
age of thirty-two. He had entered early into business, and had been
often involved in difficult and arduous enterprises, in which he
experienced a variety of men and fortunes. His father, whilst he was
very young, had sent him into Ireland, which kingdom was destined for
his portion, in order to habituate that people to their future
sovereign, and to give the young prince an opportunity of conciliating
the favor of his new subjects. But he gave on this occasion no good
omens of capacity for government. Full of the insolent levity of a young
man of high rank without education, and surrounded with others equally
unpractised, he insulted the Irish chiefs, and, ridiculing their uncouth
garb and manners, he raised such a disaffection to the English
government, and so much opposition to it, as all the wisdom of his
father's best officers and counsellors was hardly able to overcome. In
the decline of his father's life he joined in the rebellion of his
brothers, with so much more guilt as with more ingratitude and
hypocrisy. During the reign of Richard he was the perpetual author of
seditions and tumults; and yet was pardoned, and even favored by that
prince to his death, when he very unaccountably appointed him heir to
all his dominions.
It was of the utmost moment to John, who had no solid title, to
conciliate the favor of all the world. Yet one of his first steps,
whilst his power still remained dubious and unsettled, was, on pretence
of consanguinity, to divorce his wife Avisa, with whom he had lived many
years, and to marry Isabella of Angoulême, a woman of extraordinary
beauty, but who had been betrothed to Hugh, Count of Marche: thus
disgusting at once the powerful friends of his divorced wife, and those
of the Earl of Marche, whom he had so sensibly wronged.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1200.]
The King of France, Philip Augustus, saw with pleasure these proceedings
of John, as he had before rejoiced at the dispute about the succession.
He had been always employed, and sometimes with success, to reduce the
English power through the reigns of one very able and one very warlike
prince. He had greater advantages in this conjuncture, and a prince of
quite another character now to contend with. He was therefore not long
without choosing his part; and whilst he secretly encouraged the Count
of Marche, already stimulated by his private wrongs, he openly supported
the claim of Arthur to the Duchies of Anjou and Touraine. It was the
character of this prince readily to lay aside and as readily to reassume
his enterprises, as his affairs demanded. He saw that he had declared
himself too rashly, and that he was in danger of being assaulted upon
every side. He saw it was necessary to break an alliance, which the nice
circumstances and timid character of John would enable him to do. In
fact, John was at this time united in a close alliance with the Emperor
and the Earl of Flanders; and these princes were engaged in a war with
France. He had then a most favorable opportunity to establish all his
claims, and at the same time to put the King of France out of a
condition to question them ever after. But he suffered himself to be
overreached by the artifices of Philip: he consented to a treaty of
peace, by which he received an empty acknowledgment of his right to the
disputed territories, and in return for which acknowledgment he
renounced his alliance with the Emperor. By this act he at once
strengthened his enemy, gave up his ally, and lowered his character with
his subjects and with all the world.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1201.]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1202.]
This treaty was hardly signed, when the ill consequences of his conduct
became evident. The Earl of Marche and Arthur immediately renewed their
claims and hostilities under the protection of the King of France, who
made a strong diversion by invading Normandy. At the commencement of
these motions, John, by virtue of a prerogative hitherto undisputed,
summoned his English barons to attend him into France; but instead of a
compliance with his orders, he was surprised with a solemn demand of
their ancient liberties. It is astonishing that the barons should at
that time have ventured on a resolution of such dangerous importance, as
they had provided no sort of means to support them. But the history of
those times furnishes many instances of the like want of design in the
most momentous affairs, and shows that it is in vain to look for
political causes for the actions of men, who were most commonly directed
by a brute caprice, and were for the greater part destitute of any fixed
principles of obedience or resistance. The king, sensible of the
weakness of his barons, fell upon some of their castles with such timely
vigor, and treated those whom he had reduced with so much severity, that
the rest immediately and abjectly submitted. He levied a severe tax upon
their fiefs; and thinking himself more strengthened by this treasure
than the forced service of his barons, he excused the personal
attendance of most of them, and, passing into Normandy, he raised an
army there. He found that his enemies had united their forces, and
invested the castle of Mirebeau, a place of importance, in which his
mother, from whom he derived his right to Guienne, was besieged. He flew
to the relief of this place with the spirit of a greater character, and
the success was answerable. The Breton and Poitevin army was defeated,
his mother was freed, and the young Duke of Brittany and his sister were
made prisoners. The latter he sent into England, to be confined in the
castle of Bristol; the former he carried with him to Rouen. The good
fortune of John now seemed to be at its highest point; but it was
exalted on a precipice; and this great victory proved the occasion of
all the evils which afflicted his life.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1203.]
John was not of a character to resist the temptation of having the life
of his rival in his hands. All historians are as fully agreed that he
murdered his nephew as they differ in the means by which he accomplished
that crime. But the report was soon spread abroad, variously heightened
in the circumstances by the obscurity of the fact, which left all men at
liberty to imagine and invent, and excited all those sentiments of pity
and indignation which a very young prince of great hopes, cruelly
murdered by his uncle, naturally inspire. Philip had never missed an
occasion of endeavoring to ruin the King of England: and having now
acquired an opportunity of accomplishing that by justice which he had in
vain sought by ambition, he filled every place with complaints of the
cruelty of John, whom, as a vassal to the crown of France, the king
accused of the murder of another vassal, and summoned him to Paris to
be tried by his peers. It was by no means consistent either with the
dignity or safety of John to appear to this summons. He had the argument
of kings to justify what he had done. But as in all great crimes there
is something of a latent weakness, and in a vicious caution something
material is ever neglected, John, satisfied with removing his rival,
took no thought about his enemy; but whilst he saw himself sentenced for
non-appearance in the Court of Peers, whilst he saw the King of France
entering Normandy with a vast army in consequence of this sentence, and
place after place, castle after castle, falling before him, he passed
his time at Rouen in the profoundest tranquillity, indulging himself in
indolent amusements, and satisfied with vain threatenings and boasts,
which only added greater shame to his inactivity. The English barons who
had attended him in this expedition, disaffected from the beginning, and
now wearied with being so long witnesses to the ignominy of their
sovereign, retired to their own country, and there spread the report of
his unaccountable sloth and cowardice. John quickly followed them; and
returning into his kingdom, polluted with the charge of so heavy a
crime, and disgraced by so many follies, instead of aiming by popular
acts to reestablish his character, he exacted a seventh of their
movables from the barons, on pretence that they had deserted his
service. He laid the same imposition on the clergy, without giving
himself the trouble of seeking for a pretext. He made no proper use of
these great supplies, but saw the great city of Rouen, always faithful
to its sovereigns, and now exerting the most strenuous efforts in his
favor, obliged at length to surrender, without the least attempt to
relieve it Thus the whole Duchy of Normandy, originally acquired by the
valor of his ancestors, and the source from which the greatness of his
family had been derived, after being supported against all shocks for
three hundred years, was torn forever from the stock of Rollo, and
reunited to the crown of France. Immediately all the rest of the
provinces which he held on the continent, except a part of Guienne,
despairing of his protection, and abhorring his government, threw
themselves into the hands of Philip.
Meanwhile the king by his personal vices completed the odium which he
had acquired by the impotent violence of his government. Uxorious and
yet dissolute in his manners, he made no scruple frequently to violate
the wives and daughters of his nobility, that rock on which tyranny has
so often split. Other acts of irregular power, in their greatest
excesses, still retain the characters of sovereign authority; but here
the vices of the prince intrude into the families of the subject, and,
whilst they aggravate the oppression, lower the character of the
oppressor.
In the disposition which all these causes had concurred universally to
diffuse, the slightest motion in his kingdom threatened the most
dangerous consequences. Those things which in quiet times would have
only raised a slight controversy, now, when the minds of men were
exasperated and inflamed, were capable of affording matter to the
greatest revolutions. The affairs of the Church, the winds which mostly
governed the fluctuating people, were to be regarded with the utmost
attention. Above all, the person who filled the see of Canterbury, which
stood on a level with the throne itself, was a matter of the last
importance. Just at this critical time died Hubert, archbishop of that
see, a man who had a large share in procuring the crown for John, and in
weakening its authority by his acts at the ceremony of the coronation,
as well as by his subsequent conduct. Immediately on the death of this
prelate, a cabal of obscure monks, of the Abbey of St. Augustin,
assemble by night, and first binding themselves by a solemn oath not to
divulge their proceedings, until they should be confirmed by the Pope,
they elect one Reginald, their sub-prior, Archbishop of Canterbury. The
person elected immediately crossed the seas; but his vanity soon
discovered the secret of his greatness. The king received the news of
this transaction with surprise and indignation. Provoked at such a
contempt of his authority, he fell severely on the monastery, no less
surprised than himself at the clandestine proceeding of some of its
members. But the sounder part pacified him in some measure by their
submission. They elected a person recommended by the king, and sent
fourteen of the most respectable of their body to Rome, to pray that the
former proceedings should be annulled, and the later and more regular
confirmed. To this matter of contention another was added. A dispute had
long subsisted between the suffragan bishops of the province of
Canterbury and the monks of the Abbey of St. Austin, each claiming a
right to elect the metropolitan. This dispute was now revived, and
pursued with much vigor. The pretensions of the three contending parties
were laid before the Pope, to whom such disputes were highly pleasing,
as he knew that all claimants willingly conspire to flatter and
aggrandize that authority from which they expect a confirmation of
their own. The first election, he nulled, because its irregularity was
glaring. The right of the bishops was entirely rejected: the Pope looked
with an evil eye upon those whose authority he was every day usurping.
The second election was set aside, as made at the king's instance: this
was enough to make it very irregular. The canon law had now grown up to
its full strength. The enlargement of the prerogative of the Pope was
the great object of this jurisprudence,--a prerogative which, founded on
fictitious monuments, that are forged in an ignorant age, easily
admitted by a credulous people, and afterwards confirmed and enlarged by
these admissions, not satisfied with the supremacy, encroached on every
minute part of Church government, and had almost annihilated the
episcopal jurisdiction throughout Europe. Some canons had given the
metropolitan a power of nominating a bishop, when the circumstances of
the election were palpably irregular; and as it does not appear that
there was any other judge of the irregularity than the metropolitan
himself, the election below in effect became nugatory. The Pope, taking
the irregularity in this case for granted, in virtue of this canon, and
by his plenitude of power, ordered the deputies of Canterbury to proceed
to a new election. At the same time he recommended to their choice
Stephen Langton, their countryman,--a person already distinguished for
his learning, of irreproachable morals, and free from every canonical
impediment. This authoritative request the monks had not the courage to
oppose in the Pope's presence and in his own city. They murmured, and
submitted.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1208.]
In England this proceeding was not so easily ratified. John drove the
monks of Canterbury from their monastery, and, having seized upon their
revenues, threatened the effects of the same indignation against all
those who seemed inclined to acquiesce in the proceedings of Rome. But
Rome had not made so bold a step with intention to recede. On the king's
positive refusal to admit Langton, and the expulsion of the monks of
Canterbury, England was laid under an interdict. Then divine service at
once ceased throughout the kingdom; the churches were shut; the
sacraments were suspended; the dead were buried without honor, in
highways and ditches, and the living deprived of all spiritual comfort.
On the other hand, the king let loose his indignation against the
ecclesiastics,--seizing their goods, throwing many into prison, and
permitting or encouraging all sorts of violence against them. The
kingdom was thrown into the most terrible confusion; whilst the people,
uncertain of the object or measure of their allegiance, and distracted
with opposite principles of duty, saw themselves deprived of their
religious rites by the ministers of religion, and their king, furious
with wrongs not caused by them, falling indiscriminately on the innocent
and the guilty: for John, instead of soothing his people in this their
common calamity, sought to terrify them into obedience. In a progress
which he made into the North, he threw down the inclosures of his
forests, to let loose the wild beasts upon their lands; and as he saw
the Papal proceedings increase with his opposition, he thought it
necessary to strengthen himself by new devices. He extorted hostages and
a new oath of fidelity from his barons. He raised a great army, to
divert the thoughts of his subjects from brooding too much on their
distracted condition. This army he transported into Ireland; and as it
happened to his father in a similar dispute with the Pope, whilst he was
dubious of his hereditary kingdom, he subdued Ireland. At this time he
is said to have established the English laws in that kingdom, and to
have appointed itinerant justices.
At length the sentence of excommunication was fulminated against the
king. In the same year the same sentence was pronounced upon the Emperor
Otho; and this daring Pope was not afraid at once to drive to
extremities the two greatest princes in Europe. And truly, nothing is
more remarkable than the uniform steadiness of the court of Rome in the
pursuits of her ambitious projects. For, knowing that pretensions which
stand merely in opinion cannot bear to be questioned in any part, though
she had hitherto seen the interdict produce but little effect, and
perceived that the excommunication itself could draw scarce one poor
bigot from the king's service, yet she receded not the least point from
the utmost of her demand. She broke off an accommodation just on the
point of being concluded, because the king refused to repair the losses
which the clergy had suffered, though he agreed to everything else, and
even submitted to receive the archbishop, who, being obtruded on him,
had in reality been set over him. But the Pope, bold as politic,
determined to render him perfectly submissive, and to this purpose
brought out the last arms of the ecclesiastic stores, which were
reserved for the most extreme occasions. Having first released the
English subjects from their oath of allegiance, by an unheard-of
presumption, he formally deposed John from his throne and dignity; he
invited the King of France to take possession of the forfeited crown;
he called forth all persons from all parts of Europe to assist in this
expedition, by the pardons and privileges of those who fought for the
Holy Land.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1218.]
This proceeding did not astonish the world. The King of France, having
driven John from all he held on the continent, gladly saw religion
itself invite him to farther conquests. He summoned all his vassals,
under the penalty of felony, and the opprobrious name of
_culvertage_,[82] (a name of all things dreaded by both nations,) to
attend in this expedition; and such force had this threat, and the hope
of plunder in England, that a very great army was in a short time
assembled. A fleet also rendezvoused in the mouth of the Seine, by the
writers of these times said to consist of seventeen hundred sail. On
this occasion John roused all his powers. He called upon all his people
who by the duty of their tenure or allegiance were obliged to defend
their lord and king, and in his writs stimulated them by the same
threats of _culvertage_ which had been employed against him. They
operated powerfully in his favor. His fleet in number exceeded the vast
navy of France; his army was in everything but heartiness to the cause
equal, and, extending along the coast of Kent, expected the descent of
the French forces.
Whilst these two mighty armies overspread the opposite coasts, and the
sea was covered with their fleets, and the decision of so vast an event
was hourly expected, various thoughts arose in the minds of those who
moved the springs of these affairs. John, at the head of one of the
finest armies in the world, trembled inwardly, when he reflected how
little he possessed or merited their confidence. Wounded by the
consciousness of his crimes, excommunicated by the Pope, hated by his
subjects, in danger of being at once abandoned by heaven and earth, he
was filled with the most fearful anxiety. The legates of the Pope had
hitherto seen everything succeed to their wish. But having made use of
an instrument too great for them to wield, they apprehended, that, when
it had overthrown their adversary, it might recoil upon the court of
Rome itself; that to add England to the rest of Philip's great
possessions was not the way to make him humble; and that in ruining John
to aggrandize that monarch, they should set up a powerful enemy in the
place of a submissive vassal.
They had done enough to give them a superiority in any negotiation, and
they privately sent an embassy to the King of England. Finding him very
tractable, they hasted to complete the treaty. The Pope's legate,
Pandulph, was intrusted with this affair. He knew the nature of men to
be such that they seldom engage willingly, if the whole of an hardship
be shown them at first, but that, having advanced a certain length,
their former concessions are an argument with them to advance further,
and to give all because they have already given a great deal. Therefore
he began with exacting an oath from the king, by which, without showing
the extent of his design, he engaged him to everything he could ask.
John swore to submit to the legate in all things relating to his
excommunication. And first he was obliged to accept Langton as
archbishop; then to restore the monks of Canterbury, and other deprived
ecclesiastics, and to make them a full indemnification for all their
losses. And now, by these concessions, all things seemed to be perfectly
settled. The cause of the quarrel was entirely removed. But when the
king expected for so perfect a submission a full absolution, the legate
began a labored harangue on his rebellion, his tyranny, and the
innumerable sins he had committed, and in conclusion declared that there
was no way left to appease God and the Church but to resign his crown to
the Holy See, from whose hands he should receive it purified from all
pollutions, and hold it for the future by homage and an annual tribute.
John was struck motionless at a demand so extravagant and unexpected. He
knew not on which side to turn. If he cast his eyes toward the coast of
France, he there saw his enemy Philip, who considered him as a criminal
as well as an enemy, and who aimed not only at his crown, but his life,
at the head of an innumerable multitude of fierce people, ready to rush
in upon him. If he looked at his own army, he saw nothing there but
coldness, disaffection, uncertainty, distrust, and a strength in which
he knew not whether he ought most to confide or fear. On the other hand,
the Papal thunders, from the wounds of which he was still sore, were
levelled full at his head. He could not look steadily at these
complicated difficulties: and truly it is hard to say what choice he
had, if any choice were left to kings in what concerns the independence
of their crown. Surrounded, therefore, with these difficulties, and that
all his late humiliations might not be rendered as ineffectual as they
were ignominious, he took the last step, and in the presence of a
numerous assembly of his peers and prelates, who turned their eyes from
this mortifying sight, formally resigned his crown to the Pope's
legate, to whom at the same time he did homage and paid the first fruits
of his tribute. Nothing could be added to the humiliation of the king
upon this occasion, but the insolence of the legate, who spurned the
treasure with his foot, and let the crown remain a long time on the
ground, before he restored it to the degraded owner.
In this proceeding the motives of the king may be easily discovered; but
how the barons of the kingdom, who were deeply concerned, suffered
without any protestation the independency of the crown to be thus
forfeited is mentioned by no historian of that time. In civil tumults it
is astonishing how little regard is paid by all parties to the honor or
safety of their country. The king's friends were probably induced to
acquiesce by the same motives that had influenced the king. His enemies,
who were the most numerous, perhaps saw his abasement with pleasure, as
they knew this action might be one day employed against him with effect.
To the bigots it was enough that it aggrandized the Pope. It is perhaps
worthy of observation that the conduct of Pandulph towards King John
bore a very great affinity to that of the Roman consuls to the people of
Carthage in the last Punic War,--drawing them from concession to
concession, and carefully concealing their design, until they made it
impossible for the Carthaginians to resist. Such a strong resemblance
did the same ambition produce in such distant times; and it is far from
the sole instance in which we may trace a similarity between the spirit
and conduct of the former and latter Rome in their common design on the
liberties of mankind.
The legates, having thus triumphed over the king, passed back into
France, but without relaxing the interdict or excommunication, which
they still left hanging over him, lest he should be tempted to throw off
the chains of his new subjection. Arriving in France, they delivered
their orders to Philip with as much haughtiness as they had done to
John. They told him that the end of the war was answered in the
humiliation of the King of England, who had been rendered a dutiful son
of the Church,--and that, if the King of France should, after this
notice, proceed to further hostilities, he had to apprehend the same
sentence which had humbled his adversary. Philip, who had not raised so
great an army with a view of reforming the manners of King John, would
have slighted these threats, had he not found that they were seconded by
the ill dispositions of a part of his own army. The Earl of Flanders,
always disaffected to his cause, was glad of this opportunity to oppose
him, and, only following him through fear, withdrew his forces, and now
openly opposed him. Philip turned his arms against his revolted vassal.
The cause of John was revived by this dissension, and his courage seemed
rekindled. Making one effort of a vigorous mind, he brought his fleet to
an action with the French navy, which he entirely destroyed on the coast
of Flanders, and thus freed himself from the terror of an invasion. But
when he intended to embark and improve his success, the barons refused
to follow him. They alleged that he was still excommunicated, and that
they would not follow a lord under the censures of the Church. This
demonstrated to the king the necessity of a speedy absolution; and he
received it this year from the hands of Cardinal Langton.
That archbishop no sooner came into the kingdom than he discovered
designs very different from those which the Pope had raised him to
promote. He formed schemes of a very deep and extensive nature, and
became the first mover in all the affairs which distinguish the
remainder of this reign. In the oath which he administered to John on
his absolution, he did not confine himself solely to the ecclesiastical
grievances, but made him swear to amend his civil government, to raise
no tax without the consent of the Great Council, and to punish no man
but by the judgment of his court. In these terms we may Bee the Great
Charter traced in miniature. A new scene of contention was opened; new
pretensions were started; a new scheme was displayed. One dispute was
hardly closed, when he was involved in another; and this unfortunate
king soon discovered that to renounce his dignity was not the way to
secure his repose. For, being cleared of the excommunication, he
resolved to pursue the war in France, in which he was not without a
prospect of success; but the barons refused upon new pretences, and not
a man would serve. The king, incensed to find himself equally opposed in
his lawful and unlawful commands, prepared to avenge himself in his
accustomed manner, and to reduce the barons to obedience by carrying war
into their estates. But he found by this experiment that his power was
at an end. The Archbishop followed him, confronted him with the
liberties of his people, reminded him of his late oath, and threatened
to excommunicate every person who should obey him in his illegal
proceedings. The king, first provoked, afterwards terrified at this
resolution, forbore to prosecute the recusants.
The English barons had privileges, which they knew to have been
violated; they had always kept up the memory of the ancient Saxon
liberty; and if they were the conquerors of Britain, they did not think
that their own servitude was the just fruit of their victory. They had,
however, but an indistinct view of the object at which they aimed; they
rather felt their wrongs than understood the cause of them; and having
no head nor council, they were more in a condition of distressing their
king and disgracing their country by their disobedience than of applying
any effectual remedy to their grievances. Langton saw these
dispositions, and these wants. He had conceived a settled plan for
reducing the king, and all his actions tended to carry it into
execution. This prelate, under pretence of holding an ecclesiastical
synod, drew together privately some of the principal barons to the
Church of St. Paul in London. There, having expatiated on the miseries
which the kingdom suffered, and having explained at the same time the
liberties to which it was entitled, he produced the famous charter of
Henry the First, long concealed, and of which, with infinite difficulty,
he had procured an authentic copy. This he held up to the barons as the
standard about which they were to unite. These were the liberties which
their ancestors had received by the free concession of a former king,
and these the rights which their virtue was to force from the present,
if (which God forbid!) they should find it necessary to have recourse to
such extremities. The barons, transported to find an authentic
instrument to justify their discontent and to explain and sanction their
pretensions, covered the Archbishop with praises, readily confederated
to support their demands, and, binding themselves by every obligation of
human and religious faith, to vigor, unanimity, and secrecy, they depart
to confederate others in their design.
This plot was in the hands of too many to be perfectly concealed; and
John saw, without knowing how to ward it off, a more dangerous blow
levelled at his authority than any of the former. He had no resources
within his kingdom, where all ranks and orders were united against him
by one common hatred. Foreign alliance he had none, among temporal
powers. He endeavored, therefore, if possible, to draw some benefit from
the misfortune of his new circumstances: he threw himself upon the
protection of the Papal power, which he had so long and with such reason
opposed. The Pope readily received him into his protection, but took
this occasion to make him purchase it by another and more formal
resignation of his crown. His present necessities and his habits of
humiliation made this second degradation easy to the king. But Langton,
who no longer acted in subservience to the Pope, from whom he had now
nothing further to expect, and who had put himself at the head of the
patrons of civil liberty, loudly exclaimed at this indignity, protested
against the resignation, and laid his protestation on the altar.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1214.]
This was more disagreeable to the barons than the first resignation, as
they were sensible that he now degraded himself only to humble his
subjects. They were, however, once more patient witnesses to that
ignominious act,--and were so much overawed by the Pope, or had brought
their design to so little maturity, that the king, in spite of it, still
found means and authority to raise an army, with which he made a final
effort to recover some part of his dominions in France. The juncture was
altogether favorable to his design. Philip had all his attention
abundantly employed in another quarter, against the terrible attacks of
the Emperor Otho in a confederacy with the Earl of Flanders. John,
strengthened by this diversion, carried on the war in Poitou for some
time with good appearances. The Battle of Bouvines, which was fought
this year, put an end to all these hopes. In this battle, the Imperial
army, consisting of one hundred and fifty thousand men, were defeated by
a third of their number of French forces. The Emperor himself, with
difficulty escaping from the field, survived but a short time a battle
which entirely broke his strength. So signal a success established the
grandeur of France upon immovable foundations. Philip rose continually
in reputation and power, whilst John continually declined in both; and
as the King of France was now ready to employ against him all his
forces, so lately victorious, he sued, by the mediation of the Pope's
legate, for a truce, which was granted to him for five years. Such
truces stood in the place of regular treaties of peace, which were not
often made at that time.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1215.]
The barons of England had made use of the king's absence to bring their
confederacy to form; and now, seeing him return with so little credit,
his allies discomfited, and no hope of a party among his subjects, they
appeared in a body before him at London. All in complete armor, and in
the guise of defiance, they presented a petition, very humble in the
language, but excessive in the substance, in which they declared their
liberties, and prayed that they might be formally allowed and
established by the royal authority. The king resolved not to submit to
their demands; but being at present in no condition to resist, he
required time to consider of so important an affair. The time which was
granted to the king to deliberate he employed in finding means to avoid
a compliance. He took the cross, by which he hoped to render his person
sacred; he obliged the people to renew their oath of fealty; and,
lastly, he had recourse to the Pope, fortified by all the devices which
could be used to supply the place of a real strength, he ventured, when
the barons renewed their demands, to give them a positive refusal; he
swore by the feet of God (his usual oath) that he would never grant them
such liberties as must make a slave of himself.
The barons, on this answer, immediately fly to arms: they rise in every
part; they form an army, and appoint a leader; and as they knew that no
design can involve all sorts of people or inspire them with
extraordinary resolution, unless it be animated with religion, they call
their leader the Marshal of the Army of God and Holy Church. The king
was wholly unprovided against so general a defection. The city of
London, the possession of which has generally proved a decisive
advantage in the English civil wars, was betrayed to the barons. He
might rather be said, to be imprisoned than defended in the Tower of
London, to which close siege was laid; whilst the marshal of the barons'
army, exercising the prerogatives of royalty, issued writs to summon all
the lords to join the army of liberty, threatening equally all those who
should adhere to the king and those who betrayed an indifference to the
cause by their neutrality. John, deserted by all, had no resource but in
temporizing and submission. Without questioning in any part the terms of
a treaty which he intended to observe in none, he agreed to everything
the barons thought fit to ask, hoping that the exorbitancy of their
demands would justify in the eyes of the world the breach of his
promises. The instruments by which the barons secured their liberties
were drawn up in form of charters, and in the manner by which grants had
been usually made to monasteries, with a preamble signifying that it was
done for the benefit of the king's soul and those of his ancestors. For
the place of solemnizing this remarkable act they chose a large field,
overlooked by Windsor, called Running-mede, which, in our present
tongue, signifies the Meadow of Council,--a place long consecrated by
public opinion, as that wherein the quarrels and wars which arose in the
English nation, when divided into kingdoms or factions, had been
terminated from the remotest times. Here it was that King John, on the
15th day of June, in the year of our Lord 1215, signed those two
memorable instruments which first disarmed the crown of its unlimited
prerogatives, and laid the foundation of English liberty. One was called
the Great Charter; the other, the Charter of the Forest. If we look back
to the state of the nation at that time, we shall the better comprehend
the spirit and necessity of these grants.
Besides the ecclesiastical jurisprudence, at that time, two systems of
laws, very different from each other in their object, their reason, and
their authority, regulated the interior of the kingdom: the Forest Law,
and the Common Law. After the Northern nations had settled here, and in
other parts of Europe, hunting, which had formerly been the chief means
of their subsistence, still continued their favorite diversion. Great
tracts of each country, wasted by the wars in which it was conquered,
were set apart for this kind of sport, and guarded in a state of
desolation by strict laws and severe penalties. When, such waste lands
were in the hands of subjects, they were called Chases; when in the
power of the sovereign, they were denominated Forests. These forests lay
properly within the jurisdiction of no hundred, county, or bishopric;
and therefore, being out both of the Common and the Spiritual Law, they
were governed by a law of their own, which was such as the king by his
private will thought proper to impose. There were reckoned in England no
less than sixty-eight royal forests, some of them of vast extent. In
these great tracts were many scattered inhabitants; and several persons
had property of woodland, and other soil, inclosed within their bounds.
Here the king had separate courts and particular justiciaries; a
complete jurisprudence, with all its ceremonies and terms of art, was
formed; and it appears that these laws were better digested and more
carefully enforced than those which belonged to civil government. They
had, indeed, all the qualities of the worst of laws. Their professed
object was to keep a great part of the nation desolate. They hindered
communication and destroyed industry. They had a trivial object, and
most severe sanctions; for, as they belonged immediately to the king's
personal pleasures, by the lax interpretation of treason in those days,
all considerable offences against the Forest Law, such as killing the
beasts of game, were considered as high treason, and punished, as high
treason then was, by truncation of limbs and loss of eyes and testicles.
Hence arose a thousand abuses, vexatious suits, and pretences for
imposition upon all those who lived in or near these places. The deer
were suffered to run loose upon their lands; and many oppressions were
used with relation to the claim of commonage which the people had in
most of the forests. The Norman kings were not the first makers of the
Forest Law; it subsisted under the Saxon and Danish kings. Canute the
Great composed a body of those laws, which still remains. But under the
Norman kings they were enforced with greater rigor, as the whole tenor
of the Norman government was more rigorous. Besides, new forests were
frequently made, by which private property was outraged in a grievous
manner. Nothing, perhaps, shows more clearly how little men are able to
depart from the common course of affairs than that the Norman kings,
princes of great capacity, and extremely desirous of absolute power, did
not think of peopling these forests, places under their own uncontrolled
dominion, and which might have served as so many garrisons dispersed
throughout the country. The Charter of the Forests had for its object
the disafforesting several of those tracts, the prevention of future
afforestings, the mitigation and ascertainment of the punishments for
breaches of the Forest Law.
The Common Law, as it then prevailed in England, was in a great measure
composed of some remnants of the old Saxon customs, joined to the feudal
institutions brought in at the Norman Conquest. And it is here to be
observed, that the constitutions of Magna Charta are by no means a
renewal of the Laws of St. Edward, or the ancient Saxon laws, as our
historians and law-writers generally, though very groundlessly, assert.
They bear no resemblance in any particular to the Laws of St. Edward, or
to any other collection of these ancient institutions. Indeed, how
should they? The object of Magna Charta is the correction of the feudal
policy, which was first introduced, at least in any regular form, at the
Conquest, and did not subsist before it. It may be further observed,
that in the preamble to the Great Charter it is stipulated that the
barons shall _hold_ the liberties there granted _to them and their
heirs, from the king and his heirs_; which shows that the doctrine of an
unalienable tenure was always uppermost in their minds. Their idea even
of liberty was not (if I may use the expression) perfectly free; and
they did not claim to possess their privileges upon any natural
principle or independent bottom, but just as they held their lands from
the king. This is worthy of observation.
By the Feudal Law, all landed property is, by a feigned conclusion,
supposed to be derived, and therefore to be mediately or immediately
held, from the crown. If some estates were so derived, others were
certainly procured by the same original title of conquest by which the
crown itself was acquired, and the derivation from the king could in
reason only be considered as a fiction of law. But its consequent rights
being once supposed, many real charges and burdens grew from a fiction
made only for the preservation of subordination; and in consequence of
this, a great power was exercised over the persons and estates of the
tenants. The fines on the succession to an estate, called in the feudal
language _reliefs_, were not fixed to any certainty, and were therefore
frequently made so excessive that they might rather be considered as
redemptions or new purchases than acknowledgments of superiority and
tenure. With respect to that most important article of marriage, there
was, in the very nature of the feudal holding, a great restraint laid
upon it. It was of importance to the lord that the person who received
the feud should be submissive to him; he had, therefore, a right to
interfere in the marriage of the heiress who inherited the feud. This
right was carried further than the necessity required: the male heir
himself was obliged to marry according to the choice of his lord; and
even widows, who had made one sacrifice to the feudal tyranny, were
neither suffered to continue in the widowed state nor to choose for
themselves the partners of their second bed. In fact, marriage was
publicly set up to sale. The ancient records of the Exchequer afford
many instances where some women purchased by heavy fines the privilege
of a single life, some the free choice of an husband, others the liberty
of rejecting some person particularly disagreeable. And what may appear
extraordinary, there are not wanting examples where a woman has fined in
a considerable sum, that she might not be compelled to marry a certain
man; the suitor, on the other hand, has outbid her, and solely by
offering more for the marriage than the heiress could to prevent it, he
carried his point directly and avowedly against her inclinations. Now,
as the king claimed no right over his immediate tenants that they did
not exercise in the same or in a more oppressive manner over their
vassals, it is hard to conceive a more general and cruel grievance than
this shameful market, which so universally outraged the most sacred
relations among mankind. But the tyranny over women was not over with
the marriage. As the king seized into his hands the estate of every
deceased tenant in order to secure his relief, the widow was driven
often by an heavy composition to purchase the admission to her dower,
into which it should seem she could not enter without the king's
consent.
All these were marks of a real and grievous servitude. The Great Charter
was made, not to destroy the root, but to cut short the overgrown
branches of the feudal service: first, in moderating and in reducing to
a certainty the reliefs which the king's tenants paid on succeeding to
their estate according to their rank; and, secondly, in taking off some
of the burdens which had been laid on marriage, whether compulsory or
restrictive, and thereby preventing that shameful market which had been
made in the persons of heirs, and the most sacred things amongst
mankind.
There were other provisions made in the Great Charter that went deeper
than the feudal tenure, and affected the whole body of the civil
government. A great part of the king's revenue then consisted in the
fines and amercements which were imposed in his courts. A fine was paid
there for liberty to commence or to conclude a suit. The punishment of
offences by fine was discretionary; and this discretionary power had
been very much abused. But by Magna Charta, things were so ordered, that
a delinquent might be punished, but not ruined, by a fine or amercement;
because the degree of his offence, and the rank he held, were to be
taken into consideration. His freehold, his merchandise, and those
instruments by which he obtained his livelihood were made sacred from
such impositions.
A more grand reform was made with regard to the administration of
justice. The kings in those days seldom resided long in one place, and
their courts followed their persons. This erratic justice must have been
productive of infinite inconvenience to the litigants. It was now
provided that civil suits, called _Common Pleas_, should be fixed to
some certain place. Thus one branch of jurisdiction was separated from
the king's court, and detached from his person. They had not yet come to
that maturity of jurisprudence as to think this might be made to extend
to criminal law also, and that the latter was an object of still greater
importance. But even the former may be considered as a great revolution.
A tribunal, a creature of mere law, independent of personal power, was
established; and this separation of a king's authority from his person
was a matter of vast consequence towards introducing ideas of freedom,
and confirming the sacredness and majesty of laws.
But the grand article, and that which cemented all the parts of the
fabric of liberty, was this,--that "no freeman shall be taken, or
imprisoned, or disseized, or outlawed, or banished, or in any wise
destroyed, but by judgment of his peers."
There is another article of nearly as much consequence as the former,
considering the state of the nation at that time, by which it is
provided that the barons shall grant to their tenants the same liberties
which they had stipulated for themselves. This prevented the kingdom
from degenerating into the worst imaginable government, a feudal
aristocracy. The English barons were not in the condition of those
great princes who had made the French monarchy so low in the preceding
century, or like those who reduced the Imperial power to a name. They
had been brought to moderate bounds, by the policy of the first and
second Henrys, and were not in a condition to set up for petty
sovereigns by an usurpation equally detrimental to the crown and the
people. They were able to act only in confederacy; and this common cause
made it necessary to consult the common good, and to study popularity by
the equity of their proceedings. This was a very happy circumstance to
the growing liberty.
These concessions were so just and reasonable, that, if we except the
force, no prince could think himself wronged in making them. But to
secure the observance of these articles, regulations were made, which,
whilst they were regarded, scarcely left a shadow of regal power. And
the barons could think of no measures for securing their freedom, but
such as were inconsistent with monarchy. A council of twenty-five barons
was to be chosen by their own body, without any concurrence of the king,
in order to hear and determine upon all complaints concerning the breach
of the charter; and as these charters extended to almost every part of
government, a tribunal of his enemies was set up who might pass judgment
on all his actions. And that force might not be wanting to execute the
judgments of this new tribunal, the king agreed to issue his own writs
to all persons, to oblige them to take an oath of obedience to the
twenty-five barons, who were empowered to distress him by seizure of his
lands and castles, and by every possible method, until the grievance
complained of was redressed according to their pleasure: his own person
and his family were alone exempted from violence.
By these last concessions, it must be confessed, he was effectually
dethroned, and with all the circumstances of indignity which could be
imagined. He had refused to govern as a lawful prince, and he saw
himself deprived of even his legal authority. He became of no sort of
consequence in his kingdom; he was held in universal contempt and
derision; he fell into a profound melancholy. It was in vain that he had
recourse to the Pope, whose power he had found sufficient to reduce, but
not to support him. The censures of the Holy See, which had been
fulminated at his desire, were little regarded by the barons, or even by
the clergy, supported in this resistance by the firmness of their
archbishop, who acted with great vigor in the cause of the barons, and
even delivered into their hands the fortress of Rochester, one of the
most important places in the kingdom. After much meditation the king at
last resolved upon a measure of the most extreme kind, extorted by
shame, revenge, and despair, but, considering the disposition of the
time, much the most effectual that could be chosen. He dispatched
emissaries into France, into the Low Countries and Germany, to raise men
for his service. He had recourse to the same measures to bring his
kingdom to obedience which his predecessor, William, had used to conquer
it. He promised to the adventurers in his quarrel the lands of the
rebellious barons, and it is said even empowered his agents to make
charters of the estates of several particulars. The utmost success
attended these negotiations in an age when Europe abounded with a
warlike and poor nobility, with younger brothers, for whom there was no
provision in regular armies, who seldom entered into the Church, and
never applied themselves to commerce, and when every considerable family
was surrounded by an innumerable multitude of retainers and dependants,
idle, and greedy of war and pillage. The Crusade had universally
diffused a spirit of adventure; and if any adventure had the Pope's
approbation, it was sure to have a number of followers.
John waited the effect of his measures. He kept up no longer the solemn
mockery of a court, in which a degraded long must always have been the
lowest object. He retired to the Isle of Wight: his only companions were
sailors and fishermen, among whom he became extremely popular. Never was
he more to be dreaded than in this sullen retreat, whilst the barons
amused themselves by idle jests and vain conjectures on his conduct.
Such was the strange want of foresight in that barbarous age, and such
the total neglect of design in their affairs, that the barons, when,
they had got the charter, which was weakened even by the force by which
it was obtained and the great power which it granted, set no watch upon
the king, seemed to have no intelligence of the great and open
machinations which were carrying on against them, and had made no sort
of dispositions for their defence. They spent their time in tournaments
and bear-baitings, and other diversions suited to the fierce rusticity
of their manners. At length the storm broke forth, and found them
utterly unprovided. The Papal excommunication, the indignation of their
prince, and a vast army of lawless and bold adventurers were poured
down at once upon their heads. Such numbers were engaged in this
enterprise that forty thousand are said to have perished at sea. Yet a
number still remained sufficient to compose two great armies, one of
which, with the enraged king at its head, ravaged without mercy the
North of England, whilst the other turned all the West to a like scene
of blood and desolation. The memory of Stephen's wars was renewed, with
every image of horror, misery, and crime. The barons, dispersed and
trembling in their castles, waited who should fall the next victim. They
had no army able to keep the field. The Archbishop, on whom they had
great reliance, was suspended from his functions. There was no hope even
from submission: the king could not fulfil his engagements to his
foreign troops at a cheaper rate than the utter ruin of his barons.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1216]
In these circumstances of despair they resolved to have recourse to
Philip, the ancient enemy of their country. Throwing off all allegiance
to John, they agreed to accept Louis, the son of that monarch, as their
king. Philip had once more an opportunity of bringing the crown of
England into his family, and he readily embraced it. He immediately sent
his son into England with seven hundred ships, and slighted the menaces
and excommunications of the Pope, to attain the same object for which he
had formerly armed to support and execute them. The affairs of the
barons assumed quite a new face by this reinforcement, and their rise
was as sudden and striking as their fall. The foreign army of King John,
without discipline, pay, or order, ruined and wasted in the midst of its
successes, was little able to oppose the natural force of the country,
called forth and recruited by so considerable a succor. Besides, the
French troops who served under John, and made a great part of his army,
immediately went over to the enemy, unwilling to serve against their
sovereign in a cause which now began to look desperate. The son of the
King of France was acknowledged in London, and received the homage of
all ranks of men. John, thus deserted, had no other ally than the Pope,
who indeed served him to the utmost of his power, but with arms to which
the circumstances of the time alone can give any force. He
excommunicated Louis and his adherents; he laid England under an
interdict; he threatened the King of France himself with the same
sentence: but Philip continued firm, and the interdict had little effect
in England. Cardinal Langton, by his remarkable address, by his interest
in the Sacred College, and his prudent submissions, had been restored to
the exercise of his office; but, steady to the cause he had first
espoused, he made use of the recovery of his authority to carry on his
old designs against the king and the Pope. He celebrated divine service
in spite of the interdict, and by his influence and example taught
others to despise it. The king, thus deserted, and now only solicitous
for his personal safety, rambled, or rather fled, from place to place,
at the head of a small party. He was in great danger in passing a marsh
in Norfolk, in which he lost the greatest part of his baggage, and his
most valuable effects. With difficulty he escaped to the monastery of
Swineshead, where, violently agitated by grief and disappointments, his
late fatigue and the use of an improper diet threw him into a fever, of
which he died in a few days at Newark, not without suspicion of poison,
after a reign, or rather a struggle to reign, for eighteen years, the
most turbulent and calamitous both to king and people of any that are
recorded in the English history.
It may not be improper to pause here for a few moments, and to consider
a little more minutely the causes which had produced the grand
revolution in favor of liberty by which this reign was distinguished,
and to draw all the circumstances which led to this remarkable event
into a single point of view. Since the death of Edward the Confessor
only two princes succeeded to the crown upon undisputed titles. William
the Conqueror established his by force of arms. His successors were
obliged to court the people by yielding many of the possessions and many
of the prerogatives of the crown; but they supported a dubious title by
a vigorous administration, and recovered by their policy, in the course
of their reign, what the necessity of their affairs obliged them to
relinquish for the establishment of their power. Thus was the nation
kept continually fluctuating between freedom and servitude. But the
principles of freedom were predominant, though the thing itself was not
yet fully formed. The continual struggle of the clergy for the
ecclesiastical liberties laid open at the same time the natural claims
of the people; and the clergy were obliged to show some respect for
those claims, in order to add strength to their own party. The
concessions which Henry the Second made to the ecclesiastics on the
death of Becket, which were afterwards confirmed by Richard the First,
gave a grievous blow to the authority of the crown; as thereby an order
of so much power and influence triumphed over it in many essential
points. The latter of these princes brought it very low by the whole
tenor of his conduct. Always abroad, the royal authority was felt in its
full vigor, without being supported by the dignity or softened by the
graciousness of the royal presence. Always in war, he considered his
dominions only as a resource for his armies. The demesnes of the crown
were squandered. Every office in the state was made vile by being sold.
Excessive grants, followed by violent and arbitrary resumptions, tore to
pieces the whole contexture of the government. The civil tumults which
arose in that king's absence showed that the king's lieutenants at least
might be disobeyed with impunity. Then came John to the crown. The
arbitrary taxes which he imposed very early in his reign, which,
offended even more by the improper use made of them than their
irregularity, irritated the people extremely, and joined with all the
preceding causes to make his government contemptible. Henry the Second,
during his contests with the Church, had the address to preserve the
barons in his interests. Afterwards, when the barons had joined in the
rebellion of his children, this wise prince found means to secure the
bishops and ecclesiastics. But John drew upon himself at once the hatred
of all orders of his subjects. His struggle with the Pope weakened him;
his submission to the Pope weakened him yet more. The loss of his
foreign territories, besides what he lost along with them in reputation,
made him entirely dependent upon England: whereas his predecessors made
one part of their territories subservient to the preservation of their
authority in another, where it was endangered. Add to all these causes
the personal character of the king, in which there was nothing uniform
or sincere, and which introduced the like unsteadiness into all his
government. He was indolent, yet restless, in his disposition; fond of
working by violent methods, without any vigor; boastful, but continually
betraying his fears; showing on all occasions such a desire of peace as
hindered him from ever enjoying it. Having no spirit of order, he never
looked forward,--content by any temporary expedient to extricate himself
from a present difficulty. Rash, arrogant, perfidious, irreligious,
unquiet, he made a tolerable head of a party, but a bad king, and had
talents fit to disturb another's government, not to support his own.
A most striking contrast presents itself between the conduct and fortune
of John and his adversary Philip. Philip came to the crown when many of
the provinces of Prance, by being in the hands of too powerful vassals,
were in a manner dismembered from the kingdom; the royal authority was
very low in what remained. He reunited to the crown a country as
valuable as what belonged to it before; he reduced his subjects of all
orders to a stricter obedience than they had given to his predecessors;
he withstood the Papal usurpation, and yet used it as an instrument in
his designs: whilst John, who inherited a great territory and an entire
prerogative, by his vices and weakness gave up his independency to the
Pope, his prerogative to his subjects, and a large part of his dominions
to the King of France.
FOOTNOTES:
[82] A word of uncertain derivation, but which signifies some scandalous
species of cowardice.