CHAPTER XXI

THE GREAT CHARTER

The king of France may have been acting, as he would have the world

believe, as the instrument of heaven to punish the enemy of the Church,

but he did not learn with any great rejoicing of the conversion of John

from the error of his ways. Orders were sent him at once to abstain from

all attack on one who was now the vassal of the pope, and he found it

necessary in the end to obey, declaring, it is said, that the victory was

after all his, since it was due to him that the pope had subdued England.

The army and fleet prepared for the invasion, he turned against his own

vassal who had withheld his assistance from the undertaking, the Count of

Flanders, and quickly occupied a considerable part of the country. Count

Ferdinand in his extremity turned to King John and he sent over a force

under command of his brother, William Longsword, Earl of Salisbury, which

surprised the French fleet badly guarded in the harbour of Damme and

captured or destroyed 400 ships. If Philip had any lingering hope that he

might yet be able to carry out his plan of invasion, he was forced now to

abandon it, and in despair of preserving the rest of his fleet, or in a

fit of anger, he ordered it to be burned.

The Archbishop of Canterbury landed in England in July, accompanied

by five of the exiled bishops, and a few days later met the king. On

the 20th at Winchester John was absolved from his excommunication,

swearing publicly that he would be true to his agreement with

the Church, and taking an additional oath in form somewhat like the

coronation oath, which the archbishop required or which perhaps the

fact of his excommunication made necessary, "that holy Church and her

ministers he would love, defend, and maintain against all her enemies

to the best of his power, that he would renew the good laws of his

predecessors, and especially the laws of King Edward, and annul all

bad ones, and that he would judge all men according to just judgments

of his courts and restore to every man his rights." It is doubtful

if we should regard this as anything more than a renewal of the

coronation oath necessary to a full restoration of the king from the

effects of the Church censure, but at any rate the form of words seems

to have been noticed by those who heard it, and to have been referred

to afterwards when the political opposition to the king was taking

share, a sure sign of increasing watchfulness regarding the mutual

rights of king and subjects.[79]

The king was no longer excommunicate, but the kingdom was still under the

interdict, and the pope had no intention of annulling it until the

question of compensation for their losses was settled to the satisfaction

of the bishops and others whose lands had been in the hands of the king.

That was not an easy question to settle. It was not a matter of arrears

of revenue merely, for John had not been content with the annual income

of the lands, but he had cut down forests and raised money in other

extraordinary ways to the permanent injury of the property. In the end

only a comparatively small sum was paid, and in all probability a full

payment would have been entirely beyond the resources of the king, but at

the beginning John seems to have intended to carry out his agreement in

good faith. There is no reason to doubt the statement of a chronicler of

the time that on the next day after his absolution the king sent out

writs to all the sheriffs, ordering them to send to St. Albans at the

beginning of August the reeve and four legal men from each township of

the royal domains, that by their testimony and that of his own officers

the amount of these losses might be determined. This would be to all

England a familiar expedient, a simple use of the jury principle, with

nothing new about it except the bringing of the local juries together in

one place, nor must it be regarded as in any sense a beginning of

representation. It has no historic connexion with the growth of that

system, and cannot possibly indicate more than that the idea of uniting

local juries in one place had occurred to some one. We have no evidence

that this assembly was actually held, and it is highly probable that it

was not. Nor can anything more be said with certainly of writs which were

issued in November of this year directing the sheriffs to send four

discreet men from each county to attend a meeting of the council at

Oxford. John himself was busily occupied with a plan to transport the

forces he had collected into Poitou to attack the king of France there,

and he appointed the justiciar, Geoffrey Fitz Peter, and the Bishop of

Winchester, Peter des Roches, as his representatives during his absence.

These two held a great council at St. Albans in August at which formal

proclamation was made of the restoration of good laws and the abolition

of bad ones as the king had promised, the good laws now referred to being

those of Henry I; and all sheriffs and other officers were strictly

enjoined to abstain from violence and injustice for the future, but no

decision was reached as to the sum to be paid the clergy.

In the meantime John was in difficulties about his proposed expedition to

Poitou. When he was about to set out, he found the barons unwilling. They

declared that the money they had provided for their expenses had all been

used up in the long delay, and that if they went, the king must meet the

cost, while the barons of the north refused, according to one account,

because they were not bound by the conditions of their tenure to serve

abroad. In this they were no doubt wrong, if services were to be

determined, as would naturally be the case, by custom; but their refusal

to obey the king on whatever ground so soon after he had apparently

recovered power by his reconciliation with the Church is very noteworthy.

In great anger the king embarked with his household only and landed in

Jersey, as if he would conquer France alone, but he was obliged to

return. His wrath, however, was not abated, and he collected a large

force and marched to the north, intending to bring the unwilling barons

to their accustomed obedience; but his plan was interrupted by a new and

more serious opposition. Archbishop Stephen Langton seems to have

returned to England determined to contend as vigorously for the rights of

the laity as for those of the Church. We are told by one chronicler that

he had heard it said that on August 25, while the king was on the march

to the north, Stephen was presiding over a council of prelates and barons

at St. Paul's, and that to certain of them he read a copy of Henry I's

coronation charter as a record of the ancient laws which they had a right

to demand of the king. There may be difficulties in supposing that such

an incident occurred at this exact date, but something of the kind must

have happened not long before or after. If we may trust the record we

have of the oath taken by John at the time of his absolution, it suggests

that the charter of Henry I was in the mind of the man who drew it up.

Now, at any rate, was an opportunity to interfere in protection of

clearly defined rights, and to insist that the king should keep the oath

which he had just sworn. Without hesitation the archbishop went after the

king, overtook him at Northampton, where John was on the 28th, and

reminded him that he would break his oath if he made war on any of his

barons without a judgment of his court. John broke out into a storm of

rage, as he was apt to do; "with great noise" he told the archbishop to

mind his own business and let matters of lay jurisdiction alone, and

moved on to Nottingham. Undismayed, Langton followed, declaring that he

would excommunicate every one except the king who should take part in the

attack, and John was obliged again to yield and to appoint a time for the

court to try the case.

The attempt to settle the indemnity to be paid the clergy dragged on

through the remainder of the year, and was not then completed. Councils

were held at London, Wallingford, and Reading, early in October,

November, and December respectively, in each of which the subject was

discussed, and left unsettled, except that after the Reading council

the king paid the archbishop and the bishops who had been exiled 15,000

marks. At the end of September a legate from the pope, Cardinal

Nicholas, landed in England, and to him John repeated the surrender of

the crown and his homage as the pope's vassal. Along with the question

of indemnity, that of filling up the vacant sees was discussed, and

with nearly as little result. The local officers of the Church were

disposed to make as much as possible out of John's humiliation and the

chapters to assert the right of independent election. The king was not

willing to allow this, and pope and legate inclined to support him. On

October 14 the justiciar, Geoffrey Fitz Peter, died. John's exclamation

when he heard the news, as preserved in the tradition of the next

generation,--"When he gets to hell, let him greet Hubert Walter," and,

as earlier in the case of Hubert himself, "Now by the feet of God am

I first king and lord of England,"--and, more trustworthy perhaps,

the rapid decline of events after Geoffrey's death towards civil war

and revolution, lead us to believe that like many a great judge he

exercised a stronger influence over the actual history of his age than

appears in any contemporary record.

It was near the middle of February, 1214, before John was able to carry

out in earnest his plan for the recovery of Poitou. At that time he

landed at La Rochelle with a large army and a full military chest, but

with very few English barons of rank accompanying him. Since the close of

actual war between them Philip had made gains in one way or another

within the lands that had remained to John, and it was time for the Duke

of Aquitaine to appear to protect his own, to say nothing of any attempt

to recover his lost territories. At first his presence seemed all that

was necessary; barons renewed their allegiance, those who had done homage

to Philip returned and were pardoned, castles were surrendered, and John

passed through portions of Poitou and Angoulème, meeting with almost no

resistance. A dash of Philip's, in April, drove him back to the south,

but the king of France was too much occupied with the more serious danger

that threatened him from the coalition in the north to give much time to

John, and he returned after a few days, leaving his son Louis to guard

the line of approach to Paris. Then John returned to the field, attacked

the Lusignans, took their castles, and forced them to submit. The Count

of La Marche was the Hugh the Brown from whom years before he had stolen

his bride, Isabel of Angoulème, and now he proposed to strengthen the

new-made alliance by giving to Hugh's eldest son Isabel's daughter

Joanna. On June 11 John crossed the Loire, and a few days later entered

Angers, whose fortifications had been destroyed by the French. The

occupation of the capital of Anjou marks the highest point of his success

in the expedition. To protect and complete his new conquest, John began

at once the siege of La Roche-au-Moine, a new castle built by William des

Roches on the Loire, which commanded communications with the south.

Against him there Louis of France advanced to raise the siege. John

wished to go out and meet him, but the barons of Poitou refused,

declaring that they were not prepared to fight battles in the field, and

the siege had to be abandoned and a hasty retreat made across the river.

Angers at once fell into the hands of Louis, and its new ramparts were

destroyed.

It was about July first that Louis set out to raise the siege of La

Roche-au-Moine, and on the 27th the decisive battle of Bouvines was

fought in the north before John had resolved on his next move. The

coalition, on which John had laboured so long and from which he hoped so

much, was at last in the field. The emperor Otto IV, the Counts of

Flanders, Boulogne, Holland, Brabant, and Limburg, the Duke of Lorraine,

and others, each from motives of his own, had joined their forces with

the English under the Earl of Salisbury, to overthrow the king of France.

To oppose this combination Philip had only his vassals of northern

France, without foreign allies and with a part of his force detached to

watch the movements of the English king on the Loire. The odds seemed to

be decidedly against him, but the allies, attacking at a disadvantage the

French army which they believed in retreat, were totally defeated near

Bouvines. The Earl of Salisbury and the Counts of Flanders and Boulogne

with many others were taken prisoners, and the triumph of Philip was as

complete as his danger had been great. The popular enthusiasm with which

the news of this victory was received in northern France shows how

thorough had been the work of the monarchy during the past century and

how great progress had been made in the creation of a nation in feeling

and spirit as well as in name under the Capetian king. The general

rejoicing was but another expression of the force before which in reality

the English dominion in France had fallen.

The effects of the battle of Bouvines were not confined to France nor to

the war then going on. The results in German history--the fall of Otto

IV, the triumph of Frederick II--we have no occasion to trace. In English

history its least important result was that John was obliged to make

peace with Philip. The treaty was dated on September 18. A truce was

agreed upon to last for five years from the following Easter, everything

to remain in the meantime practically as it was left at the close of the

war. This might be a virtual recognition by John of the conquests which

Philip had made, but for him it was a much more serious matter that the

ruin of his schemes left him alone, unsupported by the glamour of a

brilliant combination of allies, without prestige, overwhelmed with

defeat, to face the baronial opposition which in the past few years had

been growing so rapidly in strength, in intelligent perception of the

wrongs that had been suffered, and in the knowledge of its own power.

About the middle of October John returned to England to find that the

disaffection among the barons, which had expressed itself in the refusal

to serve in Poitou, had not grown less during his absence. The interdict

had been removed on July 2, John having given security for the payment of

a sum as indemnity to the Church which was satisfactory to the pope, but

the rejoicing over this relief was somewhat lessened by the fact that the

monastic houses and the minor clergy were unprovided for and received no

compensation for their losses. The justiciar whom the king had appointed

on the eve of his departure, the Bishop of Winchester, Peter des Roches,

naturally unpopular because he was a foreigner and out of sympathy with

the spirit of the barons, had ruled with a strong hand and sternly

repressed all expression of discontent, but his success in this respect

had only increased the determination to have a reckoning with the king.

In these circumstances John's first important act after his return

brought matters to a crisis. Evidently he had no intention of abandoning

any of his rights or of letting slip any of his power in England because

he had been defeated in France, and he called at once for a scutage from

those barons who had not gone with him to Poitou. This raised again the

question of right, and we are told that it was the northern barons who

once more declared that their English holdings did not oblige them to

follow the king abroad or to pay a scutage when he went, John on his side

asserting that the service was due to him because it had been rendered to

his father and brother. In this the king was undoubtedly right. He could,

if he had known it, have carried back his historical argument a century

further, but in general feudal law there was justification enough for the

position of the barons to warrant them in taking a stand on the point if

they wished to join issue with the king. This they were now determined to

do. We know from several annalists that after John's return the barons

came to an agreement among themselves that they would demand of the king

a confirmation of the charter of Henry I and a re-grant of the liberties

contained in it. In one account we have the story of a meeting at Bury

St. Edmunds, on pretence of a pilgrimage, in which this agreement was

made and an oath taken by all to wage war on the king if he should refuse

their request which they decided to make of him in form after Christmas.

Concerted action there must have been, and it seems altogether likely

that this account is correct.

The references to the charter of Henry I in the historians of the time

prove clearly enough the great part which that document played at the

origin of the revolution now beginning. It undoubtedly gave to the

discontented barons the consciousness of legal right, crystallized their

ideas, and suggested the method of action, but it is hardly possible to

believe that a simple confirmation of this charter could now have been

regarded as adequate. The charter of Henry I is as remarkable a document

for the beginning of the twelfth as the Great Charter is for the

beginning of the thirteenth century, but no small progress had taken

place in two directions in the intervening hundred years. In one

direction the demands of the crown--we ought really to say the demands of

the government--were more frequent, new in kind, and heavier in amount

than at the earlier date. The reorganization of the judicial and

administrative systems had enlarged greatly the king's sphere of action

at the expense of the baron's. All this, and it forms together a great

body of change, was advance, was true progress, but it seemed to the

baron encroachment on his liberties and denial of his rights, and there

was a sense in which his view was perfectly correct. It was partly due to

these changes, partly to the general on-going of things, that in the

other direction the judgment of the baron was more clear, his view of his

own rights and wrongs more specific than a hundred years before, and, by

far most important of all, that he had come to a definite understanding

of the principle that the king, as lord of his vassals, was just as much

under obligation to keep the law as the baron was. Independent of these

two main lines of development was the personal tyranny of John, his

contemptuous disregard of custom and right in dealing with men, his

violent overriding of the processes of his own courts in arbitrary arrest

and cruel punishment. The charter of Henry I would be a suggestive model;

a new charter must follow its lines and be founded on its principles, but

the needs of the barons would now go far beyond its meagre provisions and

demand the translation of its general statements into specific form.

According to the agreement they had made the barons came together at

London soon after January 1, 1215, with some show of arms, and demanded

of the king the confirmation of the charter of Henry I. John replied that

the matter was new and important, and that he must have some time for

consideration, and asked for delay until the octave of Easter, April 26.

With reluctance the barons made this concession, Stephen Langton, William

Marshal, and the Bishop of Ely becoming sureties for the king that he

would then give satisfaction to all. The interval which was allowed him

John used in a variety of attempts to strengthen himself and to prepare

for the trial of arms which he must have known to be inevitable. On the

21st of the previous November he had issued a charter granting to the

cathedral churches and monasteries throughout England full freedom of

election, and this charter he now reissued a few days after the meeting

with the barons. If this was an attempt to separate the clergy from

the cause of the barons, or to bring the archbishop over wholly to his

own side, it was a failure. About the same time he adopted a familiar

expedient and ordered the oath of allegiance to himself against all men

to be taken throughout the country, but he added a new clause requiring

men to swear to stand by him against the charter.[80] Since the discussion

of the charter had begun a general interest in its provisions had been

excited, and the determination to secure the liberties it embodied had

grown rapidly, so that now the king quickly found, by the opposition it

aroused, that in this peculiar demand he had overshot the mark, and he was

obliged to recall his orders. Naturally John turned at once to the pope,

who was now under obligation to protect him from his enemies, but his

envoy was followed by Eustace de Vescy, who argued strongly for the

barons' side. The pope's letters to England in reply did not afford

decisive support to either party, though more in favour of the king's, who

was exhorted, however, to grant "just petitions" of the barons. On Ash

Wednesday John went so far as to assume the cross of the crusader, most

likely to secure additional favour from the pope, who was very anxious to

renew the attempt that had failed in the early part of his reign, no doubt

having in mind also the personal immunities it would secure him. For

troops to resist the barons in the field the king's reliance was chiefly,

as it had been during all his reign, on soldiers hired abroad, and he made

efforts to get these into his service from Flanders and from Poitou,

promising great rewards to knights who would join him from thence, as well

as from Wales.

John's preparations alarmed the barons, and they determined not to wait

for April 26, the appointed day for the king's answer. They came together

in arms at Stamford, advanced from thence to Northampton, and then on to

Brackley to be in the neighbourhood of the king, who was then at Oxford.

Their array was a formidable one. The list recorded gives us the names of

five earls, forty barons, and one bishop, Giles de Braóse, who had family

wrongs to avenge; and while the party was called the Northerners, because

the movement had such strong support in that part of England, other

portions of the country were well represented. Annalists of the time

noticed that younger men inclined to the side of the insurgents, while

the older remained with the king. This fact in some cases divided

families, as in the case of the Marshals, William the elder staying with

John, while William the younger was with the barons. That one abode in

the king's company does not indicate, however, that his sympathies in

this struggle were on that side. Stephen Langton was in form with the

king and acted as his representative in the negotiations, though it was

universally known that he supported the reforms asked for. It is probable

that this was true also of the Earl of Pembroke. These two were sent by

John to the barons to get an exact statement of their demands, and

returned with a "schedule," which was recited to the king point by point.

These were no doubt the same as the "articles" presented to the king

afterwards, on which the Great Charter was based. When John was made to

understand what they meant, his hot, ancestral temper swept him away in

an insane passion of anger. "Why do they not go on and demand the kingdom

itself?" he cried, and added with a furious oath that he would never make

himself a slave by granting such concessions.

When the barons received their answer, they decided on immediate war. As

they viewed the case, this was a step justified by the feudal law. It was

their contention that the reforms they demanded had been granted and

recognized as legal by former kings. In other words, their suzerain was

denying them their hereditary rights, acknowledged and conceded by his

predecessors. To the feudal mind the situation which this fact created

was simple and obvious. They were no longer bound by any fealty to him.

It was their right to make war upon him until he should consent to grant

them what was their due. Their first step was to send to the king the

formal diffidatio prescribed for such cases, withdrawing their fealty

and notifying him of their intention to begin war. Then choosing Robert

Fitz Walter their commander, under the title of Marshal of the Army of

God and Holy Church, they began the siege of Northampton, but were unable

to take it from lack of siege machinery. On May 17 the barons, having in

the meantime rejected several unsatisfactory proposals of the king,

entered London at the request of the chief citizens, though the tower was

still held by John's troops. The great strength of the barons at this

time as against the king was not, however, their possession of London, or

the forces which had taken the field in their cause, but the fact that

John had practically no part of England with him beyond the ground

commanded by the castles still held by his foreign soldiers. Pleas ceased

in the exchequer, we are told, and the operations of the sheriffs,

because no one could be found who would pay the king anything or show him

any obedience, and many of the barons, who up to this time had stood with

him, now joined the insurgents. No help could be had for some time from

the pope. Langton refused to act at the king's request and excommunicate

his enemies. There was nothing for John to do but to yield and trust that

time would bring about some change to relieve him of the obligations he

must assume.

On June 8 John granted a safe conduct to representatives of the barons to

negotiate with him to hold good until the 11th, and later extended the

period until the 15th. He was then at Windsor, and the barons from London

came to Staines and camped in the field of Runnymede. The "Articles" were

presented to the king in form, and now accepted by him, and on the basis

of them the Great Charter was drawn up and sealed on June 15, 1215.

In the history of constitutional liberty, of which the Great Charter is

the beginning, its specific provisions are of far less importance than

its underlying principle. What we to-day consider the great safeguards of

Anglo-Saxon liberty are all conspicuously absent from the first of its

creative statutes, nor could any of them have been explained in the

meaning we give them to the understanding of the men who framed the

charter. Consent to taxation in the modern sense is not there; neither

taxation nor consent. Trial by jury is not there in that form of it which

became a check on arbitrary power, nor is it referred to at all in the

clause which has been said to embody it. Parliament, habeas corpus, bail,

the independence of the judiciary, are all of later growth, or existed

only in rudimentary form. Nor can the charter be properly called a

contract between king and nation. The idea of the nation, as we now hold

it, was still in the future, to be called into existence by the

circumstances of the next reign. The idea of contract certainly pervades

the document, but only as the expression of the always existent contract

between the suzerain and his vassals which was the foundation of all

feudal law. On the other hand, some of the provisions of our civil

liberty, mainly in the interest of individual rights, are plainly

present. That private property shall not be taken for public use without

just compensation, that cruel and unusual punishments shall not be

inflicted nor excessive fines be imposed, that justice shall be free and

fair to all, these may be found almost in modern form.

But it is in none of these directions that the great importance of the

document is to be sought. All its specific provisions together as

specific provisions are not worth, either in themselves or in their

historical influence, the one principle which underlies them all and

gives validity to them all--the principle that the king must keep the

law. This it was that justified the barons in their rebellion. It was to

secure this from a king who could not be bound by the ordinary law that

the Great Charter was drawn up and its clauses put into the form in which

they stand. In other words, the barons contended that the king was

already bound by the law as it stood, and that former kings had

recognized the fact. In this they were entirely correct. The Great

Charter is old law. It is codification, or rather it is a selection of

those points of the existing law which the king had constantly violated,

for the purpose of stating them in such form that his specific pledge to

regard them could be secured, and his consent to machinery for enforcing

them in case he broke his pledge. The source of the Great Charter, then,

of its various provisions and of its underlying principle, must be sought

in the existing law that regulated the relations between the king and the

barons--the feudal law.

From beginning to end the Great Charter is a feudal document. The most

important of its provisions which cannot be found in this law, those

which may perhaps be called new legislation, relate to the judicial

system as recently developed, which had proved too useful and was

probably too firmly fixed to be set aside, though it was considered by

the barons to infringe upon their feudal rights and had been used in the

past as an engine of oppression and extortion. In this one direction the

development of institutions in England had already left the feudal system

behind. In financial matters a similar development was under rapid way,

but John's effort to push forward too fast along that line was one cause

of the insurrection and the charter, and of the reaction in this

particular which it embodies. As a statement of feudal law the Great

Charter is moderate, conservative, and carefully regardful of the real

rights of the king. As a document born in civil strife it is remarkable

in this respect, or would be were this not true of all its progeny in

Anglo-Saxon history. Whoever framed it must have been fair-minded and

have held the balance level between king and insurgents. Its provisions

in regard to wardship and marriage have been called weak. They are not

weak; they are just, and as compared with the corresponding provisions of

the charter of Henry I they are less revolutionary, and leave to the king

what belonged to him historically--the rights which all English kings had

exercised and which in that generation Philip of France also had

repeatedly exercised, even against John himself.

But the chief feature of the Great Charter apart from all its specific

enactments, that on which it all rests, is this, that the king has no

right to violate the law, and if he attempts to do so, may be constrained

by force to obey it. That also is feudal law. It was the fundamental

conception of the whole feudal relationship that the suzerain was bound to

respect the recognized rights of his vassal, and that if he would not, he

might be compelled to do so; nor was it in England alone that this idea

was held to include the highest suzerain, the lord paramount of the

realm.[81] Clause 61 which to the modern mind seems the most astonishing

of the whole charter, legalizing insurrection and revolution, contains

nothing that was new, except the arrangement for a body of twenty-five

barons who were to put into orderly operation the right of coercion. It

is certainly not necessary to show by argument the supreme importance of

this principle. It is the true corner-stone of the English constitution.

It was the preservation of this right, its development into new forms

to meet the changing needs of the state, that created and protected

constitutional liberty, and it was the supreme service of the Great

Charter, far beyond any accomplished by any one clause or by all specific

clauses together, to carry over from feudalism this right and to make it

the fostering principle of a new growth in which feudalism had no

share.[82]

It may be that the barons believed they were demanding nothing in the

Great Charter that had not been granted by former kings or that the king

was not bound by the law to observe. It may be possible to prove that

this belief was historically correct in principle if not in specific

form; but the king could not be expected to take the same view of the

case. He had been compelled to renounce many things that he had been

doing through his whole reign, and some things, as he very well knew,

that had been done by his father and brother before him. He may honestly

have believed that he had been forced to surrender genuine royal rights.

He certainly knew that if he faithfully kept its provisions, the task of

raising the necessary money to carry on the government, already not easy,

would become extremely difficult if not impossible. It is not likely that

John promised to be bound by the charter with any intention of keeping

his promise. He had no choice at the moment but to yield, and if he

yielded, the forces of the barons would probably scatter, and the chances

favour such a recovery of his strength that with the help of the pope he

could set the charter aside. At first nothing could be done but to

conform to its requirements, and orders were sent throughout the country

for the taking of the oath in which all men were to swear to obey the

twenty-five barons appointed guardians of the charter. Juries were to be

chosen to inquire into grievances, and some of the foreign troops were

sent home. Suspicions began to be felt, however, in regard to the

intentions of the king during the negotiations concerning details which

followed the signing of the charter. A council called to meet at Oxford

about the middle of July, he refused to attend. Nor were provocations and

violations of the spirit of the charter wanting on the part of the

barons. Certain of the party, indeed, "Trans-Humbrians" they are called,

probably the extreme enemies of the king, had withdrawn from the

conference at Runnymede, and now refused to cease hostilities because

they had had no part in making peace. The royal officers were maltreated

and driven off, and the king's manors plundered.

By August John was rapidly preparing for a renewal of the war. He sent

out orders to get the royal castles ready for defence. His emissaries

were collecting troops in Flanders and Aquitaine. Philip Augustus's Count

of Britanny, Peter of Dreux, was offered the honour of Richmond, which

former counts had held, if he would come to John's aid with a body of

knights. Money does not seem to have been lacking through the struggle

that followed, and John's efforts to collect mercenary troops were

abundantly successful. Dover was appointed as the gathering-place of his

army, both as a convenient landing-place for those coming from abroad and

for strategic reasons. As it became evident that the charter had not

brought the conflict to an end, the barons were obliged to consider what

their next step should be. In clause 61 of the charter in regard to

coercing the king, they had bound themselves not to depose him, but the

arrangements made in that clause were never put into operation, nor could

they be. There was only one way of dealing with a king who obstinately

insisted on his rights, as he regarded them, against the law, and that

was by deposition. The leaders of the barons now decided that this step

was necessary, and an effort was made to unite all barons in taking it,

but those who had been with the king before refused, and some members of

the baronial party itself were not willing to go so far, nor were the

clergy. The pope was making his position perfectly plain. Before the

meeting at Runnymede he had ordered the excommunication of the disturbers

of the king and kingdom; and when this sentence was published later, the

barons might pretend that the king was the worst disturber of the

kingdom, but they really knew what the pope intended. In September the

Bishop of Winchester and Pandulf, representing the pope, suspended

Archbishop Langton because of his refusal to enforce the papal sentences.

By the end of the month the news reached England of Innocent's bull

against the charter itself, declaring it null and void, and forbidding

the king to observe it or the barons to require it to be kept under

penalty of excommunication. Doubtless John expected this from the pope,

and if his own view of the charter were correct, Innocent's action would

be entirely within his rights. No vassal had a right to enter into any

agreement which would diminish the value of his fief, and John had done

this if the rights that he was exercising in 1213 were really his. It was

apparently about this time that the insurgent barons determined to

transfer their allegiance to Louis of France. We are told that they

selected him because, if he were king of England, most of John's

mercenaries would leave his service since they were vassals of France;

but Louis was really the only one available who could be thought to

represent in any way the old dynasty, and it would certainly be

remembered that he had been proposed for the place in 1213. Negotiations

were begun to induce him to accept, but in the meantime John had secured

a sufficient force to take the offensive, and was beginning to push the

war with unusual spirit and vigour. A part of his force he sent to

relieve Northampton and Oxford, besieged by the barons, and he himself

with the rest set out to take Rochester castle which was held against

him. Repulsed at first, he succeeded in a second attempt to destroy the

bridge across the Medway to cut off communication with London, and began

a regular siege which he pressed fiercely. The garrison was not large,

but they defended themselves with great courage, having reason to fear

the consequences of yielding, and prolonged the siege for seven weeks.

Even after the keep had been in part taken by undermining the wall they

maintained themselves in what was left until they were starved into

surrender. It was only the threat that his mercenaries would leave him

for fear of reprisals that kept John from hanging his prisoners. During

this siege the barons in London had remained in a strange inactivity,

making only one half-hearted attempt to save their friends, seemingly

afraid to meet the king in the field, and accused of preferring the

selfish security and luxury of the capital. This was their conduct during

the whole of the winter while their strongholds were captured and their

lands devastated in all parts of England by the forces of their enemy,

for John continued his campaign. Soon after the capture of Rochester he

marched through Windsor to the north of London and, leaving a part of his

army under the Earl of Salisbury to watch the barons and to lay waste

their lands in that part of the country, he passed himself through the

midlands to the north, destroying everything belonging to his enemies

that he could find and not always distinguishing carefully between

friends and foes. England had not for generations suffered such a

harrying as it received that winter. So great was the terror created by

the cruelties practised that garrisons of the barons' castles, it is

said, fled on the news of the king's approach, leaving the castles

undefended to fall into his hands. The march extended as far as Scotland.

Berwick was taken and burnt, and the parts of the country about were laid

waste in revenge for the favour which King Alexander had shown the

barons. In March, 1216, John returned to the neighbourhood of London,

leaving a new track of devastation further to the east, and bringing with

him a great store of plunder.

During the winter the barons had kept up their negotiations with Louis,

and an agreement had finally been made. They had pledged themselves to

do homage to Louis and accept him as king, and had sent to France

twenty-four hostages "of the noblest of the land" in pledge of their

fidelity. Louis in return sent over small bodies of men to their aid and

promised himself to follow in person in the spring. To this step the

barons were indeed driven, unless they were prepared to submit, because

of the strength the king had gained since the signing of the charter and

their own comparative weakness. Why this change had taken place so soon

after the barons had been all-powerful cannot now be fully explained, but

so far as we can see the opinion of a contemporary that they would have

been overcome but for the aid of the French is correct. Against the

invasion of Louis, John had two lines of defence, the pope and the fleet.

Innocent, who had once favoured a transfer of the English crown to Louis,

must now oppose it. When he learned how far preparations for the

expedition had gone, he sent a legate, Cardinal Gualo, to France to

forbid any further step. Gualo was received by Philip and his son at

Melun on April 25. There before the king and the court the case was

argued between the cardinal and a knight representing Louis, as if it

were a suit at law to be decided in the ordinary way. Louis's case was

skilfully constructed to deprive the legate of his ground of

interference, but his assertions were falsehoods or misrepresentations.

John had been condemned to death for the murder of Arthur--the first

occasion on which we hear of this--and afterwards rejected by the barons

of England for his many crimes, and they were making war on him to expel

him from the kingdom. John had surrendered the kingdom to the pope

without the consent of the barons, and if he could not legally do this,

he could by the attempt create a vacancy, which the barons had filled by

the choice of Louis. The legate, apparently unable to meet these

unexpected arguments, asserted that John was a crusader and therefore

under the protection of the apostolic see. For Louis it was answered that

John had been making war on him long before he took the cross and had

continued to do so since, so that Louis had a right to go on with the

war. The legate had no answer to this, though it was false, but he

prohibited Louis from going and his father from allowing him to go.

Louis, denying the right of his father to interfere with his claims in a

land not subject to the king of France, and sending an embassy to argue

his case before the pope, went on with his preparations. Philip Augustus

carefully avoided anything that would bring him into open conflict with

Innocent and threw the whole responsibility on his son.

Louis landed in England in the Isle of Thanet on May 21. John had

collected a large and strong fleet to prevent his crossing, but a storm

just at the moment had dispersed it and left the enemy a clear passage.

John, then at Canterbury, first thought to attack the French with his

land forces, but fearing that his hired troops would be less loyal to a

mere paymaster than to the heir and representative of their suzerain in

France, he fell back and left the way open for Louis's advance to London.

Soon after landing, Louis sent forward a letter to the Abbot of St.

Augustine's in Canterbury, who, he feared, was about to excommunicate

him. In this letter which was possibly intended also for general

circulation, he repeated the arguments used against the legate with some

additional points of the same sort, and explained the hereditary claim of

his wife and his own right by the choice of the barons. The document is a

peculiar mixture of fact and falsehood, but it was well calculated to

impose on persons to whom the minor details of history would certainly be

unknown. Rochester castle fell into the hands of the French with no real

resistance; and on June 2, Louis was welcomed in London with great

rejoicing, and at once received the homage of the barons and of the

mayor. Louis's arrival seemed to turn the tide for the moment against the

king. He retreated into the west, while the barons took the field once

more, and with the French gained many successes in the east and north,

particularly against towns and castles. On June 25, Louis occupied

Winchester. Barons who had been until now faithful to the king began to

come in and join the French as their rapid advance threatened their

estates; among them was even John's brother, the Earl of Salisbury. Early

in July Worcester was captured and Exeter threatened, and John was forced

back to the borders of Wales. This marks, however, the limit of Louis's

success. Instead of pushing his advance rapidly forward against the one

important enemy, the king himself, he turned aside to undertake some

difficult sieges, and made the further mistake of angering the English

barons by showing too great favour to his French companions. Dover castle

seemed to the military judgment of the French particularly important as

"key of England," and for more than three months Louis gave himself up to

the effort to take it.

For the first of these months, till the end of August, John remained

inactive on the borders of Wales. The death of Innocent III made no

change in the situation. His successor Honorius III continued his English

policy. With the beginning of September the king advanced as if to raise

the siege of Windsor, but gave up the attempt and passed on east into

Cambridgeshire, ravaging horribly the lands of his enemies. The barons

pursued him, and he fell back on Lincoln from which as a centre he raided

the surrounding country for more than a fortnight. On October 9, he

marched eastwards again to Lynn which, like most of the towns, was

favourable to him, and there he brought on a dysentery by overeating.

From that time his physical decline was rapid. His violent passions,

utterly unbridled, tore him to pieces more and more fiercely as he

recognized his own loss of strength and learned of one misfortune after

another. He would not rest, and he would not listen to counsel. On the

11th he went on to Wisbech, and on the next day he insisted on crossing

the Wash, without knowing the crossing or regarding the tide. He himself

passed in safety, but he lost a part of his troops and all his baggage

with his booty, money, and jewels. At night at Swineshead abbey, hot with

anger and grief, and feverish from his illness, he gave way to his

appetite again, as always, and ate to excess of peaches and new cider.

After a rest of a day he pushed on with difficulty to Sleaford. There

messengers reached him from his garrison in Dover asking his permission

to surrender if he could not relieve them at once, and the news brought

on a new passion of anger. He insisted on going one stage further to

Newark, although he had already recognized that his end was near. There

three days later, on the 19th of October, he died. The teachings of the

Church which he had slighted and despised during his life he listened to

as his end drew near, and he confessed and received the communion. He

designated his son Henry, now nine years old, as his heir, and especially

recommended him to the care of the Earl of Pembroke, and appointed

thirteen persons by name to settle his affairs and to distribute his

property according to general directions which he left. At his desire he

was buried in Worcester cathedral and in the habit of a monk.

It has already been suggested that the reigns of Richard and John form a

period of transition to a new age. That period closes and the new age

opens with the granting of the Great Charter and the attempted

revolution which followed. The reign of John was the culmination of a

long tendency in English history, most rapid since the accession of his

father, towards the establishment of an absolutism in which the rights

of all classes would disappear and the arbitrary will of the king be

supreme. The story of his reign should reveal how very near that result

was of accomplishment. A monarchy had been forming in the last three

reigns, and very rapidly in the reign of John, capable of crushing any

ordinary opposition, disregarding public opinion and traditional rights,

possessing in the new judicial system, if regarded as an organ of the

king's will alone, an engine of centralization, punishment, and

extortion, of irresistible force, and developing rapidly in financial

matters complete independence of all controlling principles. Though the

barons were acting rather from personal and selfish motives, freedom for

all classes depended on the speedy checking of this steady drift of two

generations. The reigns of Richard and John may be called transitional

because it is in them that the barons came to see clearly the principles

on which successful resistance could be founded and the absolutist

tendency checked. The embodiment of these principles in permanent form

in the Great Charter to be accepted by the sovereign and enforced in

practice, introduces an age, the age of constitutional growth, new in

the history of England, and in the form and importance of its results

new in the history of the world.

APPENDIX ON AUTHORITIES 1066-1216

While the material on which the history of any period of the Middle Ages

is based is scanty as compared with the abundant supply at the service of

the writer of modern history, the number of the original sources for the

Norman and early Angevin period is so great as to render impossible any

attempt to characterize them all in this place. The more important or

more typical chroniclers have been selected to give an idea of the nature

of the material on which the narrative rests.

The medieval chronicler did not content himself with writing the history

of his own time. He was usually ambitious to write a general history from

the beginning of the world or from the Christian era at least, and in

comparatively few cases began with the origin of his own land. For a

knowledge of times before his own he had to depend on his predecessors in

the same line, and often for long periods together the new book would be

only an exact copy or a condensation of an older one. If several earlier

writers were at hand, the new text might be a composite one, resting on

them all, but really adding nothing to our knowledge. As the writer drew

nearer to his own time, local tradition or the documents preserved in his

monastery might give him information on new points or fuller information

on others. On such matters his narrative becomes an independent authority

of more or less value, and much that is important has been preserved to

us in such additions to the earlier sources. Sometimes for a longer or

shorter period before his own day the writer may be using materials all

of which have been lost to us, and in such a case he is for our purposes

an original and independent authority, although in reality he is not

strictly original. Then follows a period, sometimes a long one, sometimes

only a very few years, in which his narrative is contemporary and written

from his own knowledge or from strictly first-hand materials. This is

usually the most valuable portion for the modern writer of history.

A large mass of material of great value cannot be described here. It is

made up of records primarily of value for constitutional history,

charters, writs, laws, and documentary material of all kinds, from which

often new facts are obtained for narrative history or light of great

value thrown on doubtful points, especially of chronology or of the

history of individuals. Of such a kind are the various monastic

cartularies, law-books like Glanvill's, records like the Patent, Close,

and Charter Rolls, collections of letters, and modern collections of

documents like T. Rymer's Foedera or J.H. Round's Calendar of

Documents Preserved in France.

The Saxon Chronicle (with translation by B. Thorpe in the Rolls Series

(1861), or C. Plummer's Two Saxon Chronicles, 1892-99) continues during

the first part of this period with its earlier characteristics unchanged,

though more full than for all but the last of the preceding age. The

Conquest had no effect on its language, and it continued to be written in

English until the end. The Worcester chronicle closes with the year 1079,

while the Peterborough book goes on to the coronation of Henry II in

1154. Practically a contemporary record for the whole period, though not

preserved to us in a strictly contemporary form throughout, it is of

especial value for the indications it gives of the feelings of the

English at a time when they were not often recorded.

William, called of Poitiers, though a Norman, chaplain of William I and

Archdeacon of Lisieux, wrote a biography of the king, Gesta Willelmi

Duels Normannorum et Regis Anglice (in Migne's Patrologia Latina,149),

of much value for the period immediately following the Conquest. It has

been thought that he was not present at the battle of Hastings, but the

account of William's movements between the battle and his coronation

contains several indications of first--hand knowledge, matters of detail

likely to be noted by an eye--witness; and though he was a strong

partisan and panegyrist of the king, his statements of what happened may

generally be accepted. His comments and opinions, however, must be used

with the greatest caution. His work originally ended in 1071, but the

last part is now wanting, and it ends abruptly in the spring of 1067. The

entire book was used, however, by Orderic Vitalis as one of the chief

sources of his narrative, and in that form we probably have all the main

facts it contained.

William of Malmesbury, born probably between 1090 and 1096, devoted

himself from early life to the study of history, seemingly attracted to

it, as he tells us himself, by the pleasure which the record of the past

gave him and by its ethical value as a collection of practical examples

of virtues and vices. This confession gives the key to the character of

his work. He prided himself on his Latin style, and with some justice. He

regarded himself not as a mere chronicler, but as a historian of a higher

rank, the disciple and first continuator of Bede. The accurate telling of

facts in their chronological order was to him less important than a

well-written and philosophical account of events selected for their

importance or interest and narrated in such a way as to bring out the

character of the actors or the meaning of the history. That he succeeded

in these objects cannot be questioned. His work is of a higher literary

and philosophical character than any written since his master Bede, or

for some time after himself. On this account, however, it gives less

direct information as to the events of the time in which he lived than we

could wish, though it is a contemporary authority of considerable value

on the reign of Henry I, and of even more value on the first years of

Stephen.

His political history is contained in two works, the Gesta Regum, which

closes with the year 1128, and the Historia Novella, which continues

the narrative to December, 1142 (W. Stubbs, Rolls Series, 1887-89). A

third work, the Gesta Pontificum (N.E.S.A. Hamilton, Rolls Series,

1870), also contains some notices of value for the political history.

William boasted a friendship with Robert, Earl of Gloucester, who was his

patron, and his sympathies were with the Empress's party in the civil

war, but he had also personal relations with Roger of Salisbury and Henry

of Winchester, and was no blind partisan.

EADMER, a monk of Canterbury, stands with William of Malmesbury in the

forefront of the historians of the twelfth century. His work, less

pretentious than William's, is simpler and more straightforward. Eadmer

was of Saxon birth and was brought up from childhood in Christ Church,

Canterbury. Affectionately attached to Anselm from an early time, he

became his chaplain on his appointment as archbishop and was with him

almost constantly in his visits to court, in his troubled dealings with

his sovereigns, and in his exile abroad. With Anselm's successor,

Archbishop Ralph, he stood in equally close relations, and he was

honoured and respected in the ecclesiastical world of his time. He writes

throughout the greater part of his history, calmly and soberly, of the

things that he had seen and in which he had taken part. His chief work,

the Historia Novorum (M. Rule, Rolls Series, 1884), begins with the

Conquest, but his main interest before the days of Anselm is in the

personality and doings of Lanfranc. In the more detailed portion of his

work his point of view is always the ecclesiastical. This is the interest

which he desires to set forth most fully, but the policy of the Church

involved itself so closely in his day with that of the State that the

history of the one is almost of necessity that of the other, and in the

Historia Novarum we have a contemporary history of English affairs, as

they came into touch with the Church, of the greatest value from the

accession of Henry I to 1121, and one which preserves a larger proportion

of the important formal documents of the time than was usual with twelfth

century historians. He wrote also in the latter part of this period a

Vita Anselmi in which the religious was even more the leading interest

than in his history, but it adds something to our knowledge of the time.

One of the best authorities for the period from the Conquest to 1141 is

the Historia Ecclesiastica of ORDERIC VITALIS (A. le Prevost, Societe

de l'Histoire de France, 1838-55). Born in England in 1075, of a Norman

father, a clerk, and an English mother, he was sent by his father at the

age of ten to the monastery of St. Evroul, and there he spent his life.

The atmosphere in this monastery was favourable to study. It had an

extensive library, and Orderic had at his command good sources of

information, though he himself took no part in the events he describes.

He paid some visits to England in which he obtained information, and as

he always looked upon himself as an Englishman, his history naturally

includes England as well as Normandy. He began to write about 1123, and

from that date on he may be regarded as a contemporary authority, but

from the Conquest the book has in many places the value of an original

account. It is an exasperating book to use because of the extreme

confusion in which the facts are arranged, or left without arrangement,

the account of a single incident being often in two widely separated

places. But the book rises much above the level of mere annals, and while

perhaps not reaching that of the philosophical historian, gives the

reader more of the feeling that a living man is writing about living men

than is usual in medieval books. It reveals in the writer a lively

imagination, which, while it does not affect the historical value of the

narrative, gives it a pictorial setting. Orderic's interest in the

minuter details of life and in the personality of the men of his time

imparts a strong human element to the book; nor is the least useful

feature of the work the writer's critical judgment on men and events,

generally on moral grounds, but often assisting our knowledge of

character and the causes of events.

HENRY, ARCHDEACON OF HUNTINGDON's Historia Anglorum (T. Arnold, Rolls

Series, 1879) becomes original, to our present knowledge at least, with

the closing of the manuscript of the Saxon chronicle which he had been

following, probably in 1121, and his narrative is contemporary from the

last years of that decade to the coronation of Henry II. He adds,

however, surprisingly little to our knowledge of the twenty-five years

during which he was writing the history of his own time. He had an active

imagination and loved to embellish the facts which he had learned with

little details that he thought likely to be true. The main value of the

original portion of his history lies in its confirmation of what we learn

from other sources.

The chronicle of FLORENCE OF WORCESTER (B. Thorpe, Engl. Hist. Soc.,

1848-49) is continued by John of Worcester as a source of primary

importance to 1141 and by others afterwards. Florence himself died in

1118, but at what point before this his own work breaks off it does not

seem possible to determine. There is at no point any real change in the

character of the chronicle. The continental chronicle which Florence had

been using as the groundwork of his account, that of Marianus Scotus,

ends with 1082, but his manuscript of the Saxon chronicle probably went

on for some distance further, and about the time of Florence's death much

use is made of Eadmer. The account is annalistic throughout, even in the

full treatment of Stephen's reign; but in its original portions, or what

seem to us original, it has the value of a contemporary record, giving us

further insight into the feelings of the English in William's reign and

the feelings and sufferings of the people of the south-west in Stephen's

time.

An interesting chronicle of Stephen's reign is that by an unknown author

known as the Gesta Stephani (R. Hewlett, Rolls Series, Chronicles of

Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, iii, 1866), which existed at the

beginning of the seventeenth century in a single manuscript since lost.

It has been conjectured with some probability that it was written by a

chaplain of the king's brother, Henry, Bishop of Winchester. Certainly

the author had very good sources of information, writes often from

personal knowledge, and though a strong partisan of Stephen's, is not

blind to his weaknesses and faults. While the first part of the narrative

was not written precisely at the date, the work has all the value of a

contemporary account from 1135, and from 1142 to 1147 it is almost our

only authority. The manuscript from which it was first printed in 1619

had been injured, and the book as it now exists breaks off in the middle

of a sentence in 1147.

ROBERT OF TORIGNI (R. Hewlett, Rolls Series. Chronicles of Stephen,

etc., iv, 1889) spent his life as a monk in Normandy, in the abbey of

Bec till 1154 and afterwards as abbot of the monastery of Mont Saint

Michel. He made apparently but two visits to England, of which we know no

particulars, but as a monk of Normandy, living in two of its most famous

monasteries, he was interested in the doings of the English kings,

particularly in their continental policy, and more especially in the

deeds of the two great Henries. He began to write as a young man, and by

1139, about the time he reached the age of thirty, he seems to have

completed his account of the reign of Henry I, which he wrote as an

additional, an eighth? book to the History of the Normans of William of

Jumieges. His more extended chronicle he had begun before leaving Bec,

and he carried the work with him to Mont-Saint-Michel. Down to 1100

this is the chronicle of Sigebert of Gemblours with additions, and it

becomes a wholly original chronicle only with 1147. Though of great value

for the knowledge of facts, especially between 1154 and 1170, the

chronicle never rises above the character of annals and was carelessly

constructed, especially as to chronology; it was perhaps worked up by

monks of his house from a somewhat rough first draft of memoranda by the

abbot. The book closes at the end of 1185, shortly before the death of

Robert.

The writer of the twelfth century who comes the nearest to looking upon

the task of the historian as a modern writer would is WILLIAM OF NEWBURGH

(R. Hewlett, Rolls Series, Chronicles of Stephen, etc., i, and ii,

1884-85). His purpose is not merely to record what happened, with a

rather clear conception of the duty of the historian to be accurate and

to use the best sources, but to make a selection of the facts, using the

more important and those that will show the drift and meaning of the age,

and combining them into something like an explanatory account of the

period; and this he does with constant critical judgment of men and

measures and great breadth of historical view. His Historia Rerum

Anglicarum, which may be said to begin with the reign of Stephen, after

a brief introduction on the three preceding reigns, appears to have been

composed as a whole within two or three years at the close of the twelfth

century. The probability is that no part of it is original, in the sense

that it was written solely from first-hand knowledge; but the sources

from which he derived his material for the period from 1154 to 1173, and

at later dates, have not come down to us, and he must have drawn from

some personal knowledge in the last portion of his work. It is

throughout, however, a critical commentary of great value on the history,

and an interpretation of it by a man of clear, impartial, and broad

judgment, and one not too far removed from the time of which he wrote to

be out of sympathy with it.

For the last half of the reign of Henry II we have the advantage of a

valuable and in some respects very interesting and attractive chronicle.

This is the Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi, associated with the name of

BENEDICT OF PETERBOROUGH (Rolls Series, 2 vols.). Benedict, however, was

not the author, and no certain evidence as to who he was can be derived

from any source, nor does the chronicle itself supply many of those

incidental indications from which it is often possible to learn much

regarding the author of an anonymous book. The tentative suggestion of

Bishop Stubbs that it may have been written by Richard Fitz Neal, the

author of the Dialogus de Scaccario, is now generally regarded as

inadmissible. The work begins in 1170, and from a date a year or two

later is evidently contemporaneous to its close in 1192, with perhaps a

slight interruption at 1177. It is written in a simple and

straightforward way, and with a sure touch, unusual accuracy of

statement, and a clear understanding of constitutional details; it

suggests an interesting personality in its author, with whom we

constantly desire a closer acquaintance. Whoever he was, he possessed

good sources of information, though apparently too great consideration

for king or court keeps him sometimes from saying all he knows or

believes, and he has inserted in his work many letters and important

documents.

The work known by the name of Benedict was taken up into his own and

carried forward to 1201 by an almost equally important chronicler, ROGER

OF HOWDEN (W. Stubbs, Rolls Series, 1868-71). The writer was a northerner

who began his history with 732, using for all the first part of it

northern historians, with some slight additions between 1149 and 1169.

From 1170 he copies nearly all the Gesta Regis Henrici, adding to it

occasionally original information and some documents, but the knowledge

of value which we derive from his additions is disappointingly small

considering that he held official positions under the king and was

employed by him on various missions. From 1192 to its close the work is

an original and contemporary history, carefully written and of great

value, and containing an even larger proportion of documents than

Benedict. The chronicle excites less interest in the personality of its

author than does its predecessor; is of a somewhat more solemn type, and

shows more plainly the traits of the ordinary ecclesiastical writer in

its sympathy with current superstitions and its frequent moralizing.

RALPH DE DICETO, Dean of St. Paul's during the last ten years of Henry

II's reign and the whole of Richard's, began soon after he became dean a

chronicle which he called Imagines Historiarum, or Outlines of History

(W. Stubbs, Rolls Series, 1876). It begins with 1148, to which date he

had brought down an abstract of earlier chronicles from the creation. To

about 1183 the work is based on the writings of others, but from 1162 it

becomes more full and contains much that is original in form at least.

From 1183 to its close in 1202 it is a contemporary account of the

highest value, especially for the reign of Richard. Ralph stood in close

relations with Richard Fitz Neal, from 1189 Bishop of London, for forty

years treasurer of the kingdom, and himself the author of historical

books, and with William Longchamp King Richard's representative. From

his official position also he possessed unusually good opportunities of

information and means of forming those judgments on affairs which are a

feature of his chronicle. He has embodied many important documents in his

narrative though sometimes not with the true historian's feeling of the

importance of the exact language in such cases. His statements of fact

and of opinion both greatly aid our understanding of his times, and his

writing has, like Benedict of Peterborough, a straightforward air which

itself carries weight.

While the more important chroniclers were writing the secular history of

the reigns of Henry II and Richard I, a monk of Christ Church,

Canterbury, of the name of GERVASE (W. Stubbs, Rolls Series, 1879-80),

was also writing a chronicle in which he was chiefly interested to

preserve the history of the troubles and ecclesiastical controversies of

his house and of the archbishopric. Incidentally, however, he gives us

some information concerning political events and considerable

confirmatory evidence. He began writing about 1188, and his principal

chronicle becomes contemporary soon after that date. It exactly covers a

century, opening with the accession of Henry I and closing with the death

of Richard I. A minor chronicle, entitled Gesta Regum, begun after the

close of the other, starts with the mythical Brutus, the Trojan who gave

his name to Britain, and comes rapidly down to the accession of John,

abridging earlier works. For the reign of John it is a contemporary

chronicle, not very full, but of real value. Gervase writes always as a

monk, and even more narrowly, as a monk of Canterbury, influenced by the

feelings of his order and monastery. His attitude towards the kings under

whom he writes is unsympathetic, and his interest in political matters is

always very slight, but his references to them are not on that account

without a value of their own.

RALPH, abbot of the Cistercian monastery of Coggeshall from 1207 to 1218,

when he resigned because of illness, wrote a Chronicon Anglicanum (J.

Stevenson, Rolls Series, 1875), which extends from 1066 to 1223. To 1186

the entries are brief annals: with 1187 the history becomes more full,

but the writer's interest is chiefly in the crusade, of which important

and interesting accounts are given from excellent sources; and

comparatively little is recorded concerning the history of England proper

before the accession of John. For the reign of John the book is one of

our most important and trustworthy contemporary sources. Ralph was

greatly interested in mythical tales, especially in wonderful occurrences

in nature, and he records these at length as he heard of them, but this

habit does not affect the character of his historical record proper. As a

historian he is very well informed, though he gives but few documents; he

saw clearly the essential point of things and had a sense of accuracy.

A compilation from earlier historical works made, in the form in which we

have it, at the end of the thirteenth or the beginning of the fourteenth

century and known by the name of WALTER OF COVENTRY (W. Stubbs, Rolls

Series, 1872-73), has preserved a continuation of Roger of Howden which

is of great value. This is a chronicle of John's reign and the early

years of Henry III, from 1202 to 1226, probably written in the monastery

of Barnwell about the time the narrative closes, and original and

practically contemporary at least from 1212. From 1202 to 1208 the

entries are brief and annalistic, with occasionally a suggestive comment.

With 1209 the notices begin to be longer, and with 1212 they form a

detailed narrative. The writer has a better opinion of John, at least of

his ability, than other chroniclers of the time, does not attribute his

misfortunes to the king's faults, and has little sympathy with the cause

of the barons. He is accurate in his statements, clear in his narrative,

and shows a tendency to reflect on the causes and relations of the

leading facts.

Besides these, most important of the primary authorities, there are a

number of others of hardly less value. SIMEON OF DURHAM's Historia

Regum (T. Arnold, Rolls Series, 1882-85) becomes an independent

chronicle from 1119 to 1129 and is continued by JOHN OF HEXHAM (ed. with

Simeon of Durham) to 1154 in a narrative not contemporary, but in many

places original, while RICHARD OF HEXHAM (Chronicles of Stephen, etc.,

iii), perhaps John's predecessor as prior, wrote a contemporary history

covering the time from the death of Henry I to early in 1139. All these

are of especial value for the affairs of northern England. About the same

time Master GEOFFREY GAIMAR, the Trouvère, wrote a chronicle in French

verse which is mainly a translation from the Saxon chronicle and other

earlier writers (T.D. Hardy and C.T. Martin, Rolls Series, 1888-89). It

closes with the death of William Rufus, and is chiefly of interest as

giving a glimpse of the opinion held by laymen of the noble class about

that king. Valuable evidence regarding the Becket controversy is

collected in the seven volumes in the Rolls Series, entitled Materials

for the History of Thomas Becket (J.C. Robertson, 1875-85). They contain

nine contemporary lives of the archbishop and one later one, and three

volumes of letters of Becket and others. On the conquest of Ireland there

is an important French poem called the Song of Dermot and the Earl

(G.H. Orpen, 1892) that was written in the next century, but based on a

contemporary narrative; and GIRALDUS CAMBRENSIS (J.S. Brewer, J.F.

Dimock, and G.P. Warner, Rolls Series, 186191) gives a lively

contemporary account of the Conquest, and descriptions of Ireland as well

as of Wales. He also wrote later a book called De Principis

Instructione, an avowed attack on Henry II and his sons, against whom he

had the grievance of disappointed ambition. The book relates in passing

many incidents that fill out our knowledge of the period, and it

possesses some value from the very fact of its unfriendly criticism.

This, but not much more than this, is also true of RALPH NIGER's

contemporary chronicles of Henry II's reign, written in a spirit very

unfriendly to the king (R. Anstruther, Caxton Society, 1851). An account

of Richard's crusade is preserved in the Itinerarium Regis Ricardi (W.

Stubbs, Rolls Series, Chronicles of Richard I, 1864), which is no more

than a translation from a contemporary French poem. A biography of St.

Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln, who died in 1200, was written after his death by

his chaplain and contains many incidental references to public affairs--a

few of great value (J.F. Dimock, Rolls Series, 1864). Another biography,

written in French verse not quite contemporary, but based on information

from a companion of the subject, is the Histoire de Guillaume le

Maréchal (P. Meyer, Soc. Hist. de France, 1891-1901). It follows the

life of William Marshal through the reigns of Henry II, Richard, and

John, and to his death in 1219. It relates many facts, gives much

information as to life and manners and suggestions of interpretation from

a layman's point of view. Foreign chronicles, of value on the foreign

policy of the English kings, are that of GEOFFREY, Prior of VIGEOIS (in

Bouquet's Recueil des Historiens de France), on nearly the whole of

Henry II's reign, the contemporary histories of Philip Augustus by

RIGORD, and GUILLAUME LE BRETON, and the Histoire des Ducs de Normandie

(all in the collections of the Soc. Hist. de France). The last is

original and contemporary on the reign of John. Collections of letters

like those of Lanfranc, and monastic annals like those of Burton,

Waverley, and Dunstable, aid materially in filling out our knowledge. A

great school of historical writing was rising into prominence as this

period closed, in the monastery of St. Albans. Its first great

historiographer, ROGER OF WENDOVER (H.O. COXE, Engl. Hist. Soc.,

1841-44), probably did not begin to write his chronicle until after the

death of John, but his account of that king's reign, written not long

after its close, is original and has the practical value of a

contemporary narrative.

Of secondary authorities of importance who have written on this period at

any length the list is unfortunately short.

First and foremost for every student of Norman and early Angevin history

is the work of Bishop STUBBS. With a more direct, personal interest in

the growth of institutions, still in his Constitutional History and in

his prefaces to the volumes he edited for the Master of the Rolls he

discussed the narrative history of the whole age and very fully the

reigns of Henry II and his two sons. The characteristic of Bishop

Stubbs's work, which makes it of especial value to the student of the

present generation, is the remarkable clearness with which he saw the

essential meaning of his material and its bearing on the problem under

discussion. While he generally neglected a wide range of material of

great value to the historian of institutions--the charters and legal

documents--and did not always formulate clearly in his mind the exact

problem to be solved, yet the keenness with which he detected in

imperfect material the real solution is often marvellous. Again and again

the later student finds but little more to do than to prove more fully

and from a wider range of material the intuitive conclusions of his

master.

For the reigns of the Conqueror and of William II we have the benefit of

the minute studies of EDWARD A. FREEMAN in his History of the Norman

Conquest and his Reign of William Rufus. The faults of Mr. Freeman's

work are very serious, and they mar too greatly the results of long and

patient industry and much enthusiasm for his subject. The neglect of

unprinted material and of almost all that is strictly constitutional in

character, and the personal bias arising from his strongly held theory of

Teutonic influence in early English history, make every conclusion one to

be accepted with caution, but his long books on these reigns furnish a

vast store of fact and suggestion of the greatest importance to the

student. The Norman Conquest closes with a summary history to the death

of Stephen, which is of considerable value.

The second volume of Sir JAMES RAMSAY's Foundations of England and his

Angevin Empire together form a continuous history of the whole age from

1066 to 1216. These books are to be noticed for their careful inclusion of

details and their bringing all the sources together that bear on successive

facts, so as to furnish an almost complete index to the original

authorities.

Miss KATE NORGATE has written two books which form a continuous history

from the accession of Stephen to the death of John--England under the

Angevin Kings and John Lackland. In the first book the influence of

John Richard Green is clearly traceable both in the style and in the

selection of facts for treatment. It contains many discussions of

difficult questions that must be taken into account in forming a final

opinion. The second book is a sober and careful study of John's career that

brings out some new points of detail, especially in his last years, but

gives little attention to constitutional changes.

Three scholars whose work does not bear immediately upon the political

history, or bears only upon portions of it, but who have yet contributed

greatly by their studies to our understanding of it, are Professor F.W.

MAITLAND, Professor FELIX LIEBERMANN, and Mr. HORACE ROUND. Professor

Maitland's field is that of legal history, in which he has done as great

a work as that of Stubbs in constitutional history, and incidentally

has thrown much light on problems which Stubbs discusses. His intimate

knowledge and his scientific caution of statement give to any conclusion

that he puts in positive form an almost final authority. Of Dr. Liebermann

it is to be said that probably no living man has so complete a knowledge of

the material which the historian of this period must use, whether that be

the original material of the age itself or the scattered work of secondary

authorities of different ages and many languages. His own work has been

mainly devoted to the preparation of scientifically edited texts, mostly

of legal material, but also of extracts from a considerable range of

chronicles--work unrivalled in its thoroughness and in its approach to

finality. Scattered in the introductions to these texts is a mass of

information on points of all kinds, which no student of the times can

neglect; while an occasional formal article, like that on Anselm and

Archbishop Hugh of Lyons, awakens regret that they are so few. The work

of Mr. Round has nearly all appeared in short studies on isolated topics.

In Geoffrey de Mandeville he has written one book on the reign of

Stephen that approaches the character of narrative history. In his

Feudal England and Commune of London many articles on problems of

this age have been collected in a form convenient for reference. Mr.

Round's knowledge of the history of persons and families is unsurpassed;

he subjects the material he uses to a minuteness of analysis that is

unusual; and he has settled, so far as the evidence admits of it, some

important questions and a large number of minor problems, both of the

history of events and of institutions.

We owe to foreign scholars many studies of value on particular questions

of Norman and Angevin history, like M. CHARLES BÉMONT's on the trial of

King John for the murder of Arthur, and a few long works of first

importance. Dr. H. BÖHMER's Kirche und Staat in England und der Normandie

im XI und XII Jahrhundert is of great interest on the conflict of Anselm

with Henry I and the consequences that flowed from it. O. RÖESSLER's

Kaiserin Mathilde is of particular value for the foreign policy of Henry

I and for the reign of Stephen, though inclined to attach too much weight

to what are really conjectures. M.A. LUCHAIRE's contribution to E.

Lavisse's Histoire de France is a very interesting piece of work,

dealing fully with the French side of English foreign relations, and of

especial value for the first three Angevin kings. The same subject is

receiving also minute and careful treatment in Dr. ALEXANDER CARTELLIERI's

Philip II Augustus, Koenig van Frankreich, the first volume of which

goes to the death of Henry II, while M. PETIT-DUTAILLIS's Étude sur la

Vie et la Règne de Louis VIII is useful for the last years of John.

It is impossible in a bibliography of this kind to speak of all the long

list of monographs and special studies, English and foreign, which alone

make possible the writing of a history of this age, and to which the

writer must acknowledge his obligations in general terms.