JOHN AND THE POPE
1210–1214
[Rex] prudenter sane sibi et suis providens in hoc facto, licet
id multis ignominiosum videretur, et enorme servitutis jugum.
Cum enim res in arto esset, et undique timor vehemens, nulla erat
via compendiosior imminens evadendi periculum, nec forsitan alia;
quoniam ex quo se in protectione posuit apostolica, et regna sua
beati Petri patrimonium fecit, non erat in orbe Romano princeps qui
in sedis apostolicae injuriam vel illum infestare, vel illa invadere
praesumeret.
W. COVENTRY, ii. 210.
[Sidenote: 1210–10]
During John’s absence in Ireland, England had been disquieted by
rumours of a threatened Welsh invasion. His ministers, however,
faced the peril boldly; the justiciar, the treasurer (Bishop Peter
of Winchester), and the earl of Chester marched into Wales with
“a great host” and built three castles on Welsh soil,[700] and on
the king’s return the Welsh “vanished,” as a chronicler says, into
their mountains, “and the land kept silence before him.”[701] John,
however, was in no mood, now that England, Scotland and Ireland were
all at his feet, to be content with mere silence on the part of the
Welsh princes, and especially of his own son-in-law, Llywelyn, who,
having secured the hand of the king’s daughter and the mastery over
the greater part of Wales, was now openly turning against the power
by whose help he had risen. The case is frankly stated by a Welsh
chronicler: “Llywelyn, son of Jorwerth, made cruel attacks upon the
English; and on that account King John became enraged, and formed
a design of entirely divesting Llywelyn of his dominion.”[702] The
native rivals whom Llywelyn had forced into submission were always on
the watch for a chance of flinging off the North-Welsh yoke; and when
John assembled his host at Chester, seemingly in the third week of May
1211,[703] he was joined by most of the chieftains of the south.[704]
At the tidings of his approach, “Llywelyn,” says the same chronicler,
“moved with his forces into the middle of the country, and his property
to the mountain of Eryri (Snowdon); and the forces of Mona, with their
property, in the same manner. Then the king, with his army, came to
the castle of Dyganwy. And there the army was in so great a want of
provisions that an egg was sold for a penny halfpenny, and it was a
delicious feast to them to get horseflesh; and on that account the king
returned to England, after disgracefully losing many of his men and
much property.”[705]
[Sidenote: 1211]
Whatever military “disgrace” there may have been was speedily wiped
out; John had only gone home to collect fresh supplies and larger
forces.[706] Setting forth again from Whitchurch in July,[707] “the
king”--again it is a Welsh chronicler who tells the story--“returned
to Wales, his mind being more cruel and his army larger; and he built
many[708] castles in Gwynedd. And he proceeded over the river Conway
towards the mountain of Eryri, and incited some of his troops to burn
Bangor. And there Robert, bishop of Bangor, was seized in his church,
and was afterwards ransomed for two hundred hawks.” Llywelyn sent his
wife to make terms for him with her father, and was received into
the king’s peace on delivering up to him a large number of hostages,
paying a heavy indemnity in cattle and horses, “and consigning also
the midland district to the king for ever. And thereupon all the Welsh
princes, except Rhys and Owain, the sons of Gruffydd, son of Rhys,
made peace with the king; and the king returned victoriously, and
with extreme joy, to England.”[709] Of course the peace was a hollow
one, like every other peace with the Welsh; but for the moment John’s
success was complete. “In Ireland, Scotland, and Wales there was no
man who did not obey the nod of the king of England--a thing which, it
is well known, had never happened to any of his forefathers; and he
would have appeared happy indeed, and successful to the utmost of his
desires, had he not been despoiled of his territories beyond the sea,
and under the ban of the Church.”[710]
[Sidenote: 1210]
To neither of these drawbacks was John altogether indifferent. He
was only biding his time to make a great effort for the removal of
the first; and although the second appeared, as yet, to have made no
difference to his political position, he was not insensible to the
dangers which it might involve. He was still playing with both primate
and Pope. In the spring of 1210 he had made another feint of renewing
negotiations with Stephen Langton, had sent him a safe-conduct for a
conference to be held at Dover, and had actually gone thither (May 4),
ostensibly for the purpose of meeting him. But the safe-conduct was
irregular in form; and this circumstance, coupled with a warning from
some English barons, made Stephen refuse to trust himself in John’s
power.[711] The king vented his wrath by cutting down the woods on
all the archbishop’s manors.[712] On his return from Ireland he dealt
a heavy blow at the religious orders. Towards the end of October he
called together in London the heads of all the religious houses in
England, and compelled them to give him sums of money, of which the
total is said to have amounted to one hundred thousand pounds.[713] The
Cistercians, whom he had spared in the earlier days of the Interdict,
had to bear the brunt of his exactions now; they “were forced to
find him chariots with horses and men,”[714] or, as another writer
explains it, their privileges were quashed, and they had to give the
king forty thousand pounds;[715] moreover, their abbots were forbidden
to attend the triennial chapter of the order at Cîteaux, “lest their
piteous complaints should exasperate the whole world against such an
oppressor.”[716]
[Sidenote: 1211]
In June or July 1211[717] the cardinal subdeacon Pandulf, who was much
in the Pope’s confidence, and a Templar named Durand came to England
“that they might restore peace between the Crown and the clergy.”[718]
They seem to have been sent at the king’s request. The terms of the
commission which they had received from the Pope are known from a
reissue of it two years later. They were to exhort John to make
satisfaction “according to a form subscribed between ourself” (the
Pope) “and his envoys.” If he would publicly take an oath of absolute
obedience to the Pope’s mandates on all matters for which he was under
excommunication, they were to give him absolution; and when they had
obtained from him security for the reinstatement of the archbishop of
Canterbury, they were to withdraw the interdict.[719] John met them
on his return from Wales, at Northampton, on August 30,[720] and
received them publicly in a great assembly of the barons. The details
of the conference rest only upon the authority of two comparatively
late monastic chronicles; but there is no reason for doubting the
correctness of the main outlines of their story. The envoys called upon
John to make satisfaction to the Church, restore the property which
he had taken from her ministers, and receive Archbishop Stephen, the
exiled bishops, their kinsfolk and their friends “fairly and in peace.”
The king answered that they might make him swear to restore everything,
and he would do whatever else they liked, “but if that fellow Stephen
sets foot in my land, I will have him hanged.” A discussion followed as
to the circumstances of Stephen’s election and the respective rights
of Pope and King in such matters. John ended by offering to receive as
archbishop any one whom the Pope might choose except Stephen, and to
give Stephen another see if he would resign all claims upon Canterbury.
Pandulf scornfully rejected this proposal. At last, in presence of
the whole council, he pronounced to John’s face the papal sentence
of excommunication, of which, he said, the publication had only been
delayed till his own arrival in England and that of his colleagues;
he absolved all John’s subjects from their allegiance, bade them be
ready to join the ranks and obey the leader of any host which the Pope
might send to England, and denounced not only John himself, but also
all his posterity, as for ever incapacitated for the office of king.
It is said that on this John bade the sheriffs and foresters who were
present bring in whatever prisoners they had in their charge, and
gave orders for the hanging of some and the blinding or mutilation
of others, to show the papal envoys his own absolute power and his
ruthlessness in the exercise of it; that among the prisoners was a
clerk charged with forgery, whom he ordered to be hanged; that Pandulf
wanted to excommunicate at once any one who should lay hands on this
man, and went out of the hall to fetch a candle for the purpose,
but that the king followed him and gave up the accused clerk “to his
judgement”--which of course meant, to be set at liberty.[721] Whether
or not the mock tragedy enacted between king and cardinal really ended
in this strange fashion, the result of the conference was clearly
the same as that of all previous diplomacy between Innocent III. and
John: the Pope gained nothing and the king lost nothing. Pandulf and
Durand went back to Rome accompanied by envoys from John;[722] an order
was issued for the recall of the exiles, but it seems to have taken
the form of a writ bidding all bishops and beneficed clergy return
before next mid-summer, “on pain of losing their property.”[723] The
excommunicate sovereign kept his Christmas feast at Windsor,[724] and
found a new triumph awaiting him at the opening of the new year.
[Sidenote: 1212]
King William of Scotland, stricken in years and with no male heir save
one young son, the child of his old age, was hard pressed by a party in
his realm who rallied round a certain Cuthred MacWilliam, a descendant
of the older line of Scottish kings which the house of Malcolm and
Margaret had ousted from the succession. In despair of overcoming
these rebels, William turned to England for succour, and early in 1212
“committed himself, his kingdom and his son to the care” of his English
overlord.[725] Before Ash Wednesday (February 7) he had formally
granted to John the right to dispose of young Alexander in marriage,
“as his liegeman,” within six years from that date.[726] On Mid-Lent
Sunday, March 4, the boy was knighted by John, “as the king held a
festival in the Hospital of S. Bridget at Clerkenwell.”[727] Later
in the year an English army marched to William’s aid. John himself
probably led his troops as far as Hexham, where he was on June 27,[728]
and then sent them on to Scotland with instructions which proved
sufficient to secure the object of their expedition. They scoured the
country till Cuthred fell into their power; and the struggle of the old
Scottish royal house against the “modern kings” ended, for a time at
least, with the hanging of its champion by English hands.[729]
[Sidenote: 1211]
Meanwhile, John had never lost sight of his plans for a renewal of the
war with France. The first need of course was money. It was probably
in the hope of finding some additional sources of revenue which could
be claimed for the Crown that on his return from Ireland he ordered
an inquiry into all assizes of novel disseisin which had been held
during his absence, and also into the right of presentation to,
and actual tenancy of, all ecclesiastical benefices throughout the
country.[730] An inquest into the services due from the knights and
other tenants-in-chief in every shire was ordered in the same year or
early in the next;[731] and an inquest concerning escheated honours and
the services due from them was set on foot shortly afterwards.[732]
In 1211 “the king of France seized all the English ships that touched
his shores, and therefore”--says the Dunstable annalist--“the king
of England seized many men of the Cinque Ports”;[733] a statement
which we can only suppose to mean one of two things: either that John
suspected some of the ships to have been willing prizes, or that he was
dissatisfied with the way in which his sailors had executed, or failed
to execute, some order which he had given for retaliation. In either
case, however, it is clear that he made his displeasure a ground for
further exactions from the leading men of the southern coast towns.
[Sidenote: 1197–1209]
Of far greater moment than the desultory skirmishes between the
sailors of England and France was the scheme of European coalition
against Philip which John had been gradually building up during the
past ten years. One of the most important elements in his political
calculations throughout those years was the course of events in
Germany. The death of the Emperor Henry VI. in September 1197 had
been followed by a disputed election to the imperial crown, the late
Emperor’s brother, Philip of Suabia, claiming it for himself against
the candidate chosen by the majority of the electors, Otto of Saxony,
a son of Duke Henry the Lion and Maud, daughter of Henry II. of
England.[734] The Suabian prince was backed by his powerful family
connexions, including the duke of Austria, son and successor of Richard
Cœur-de-Lion’s old enemy Leopold. Otto’s youth had been passed in
exile at the court of his Angevin grandfather, and he was a special
favourite of his uncle Richard, who granted him first the earldom of
York and afterwards the county of Poitou, and whose influence with some
of the princes of the empire had had a share in procuring him their
votes. It was, therefore, obvious policy for his rival and the king of
France to make common cause against him and his kinsman of England.
A treaty of alliance between the two Philips was signed on June 29,
1198.[735] In 1200 Otto sent his two brothers to demand for him from
John a renewal of the investiture of York and of Poitou, and also--if
we may believe Roger of Howden--two-thirds of Richard’s treasure and
all his jewels, which he said Richard had bequeathed to him. His
assertion was correct with regard to the jewels, but the other claims
are so unreasonable that it is difficult to believe that they can have
had any justification.[736] John, however, had an answer ready for
all these demands. The envoys did not reach him till after the treaty
of Gouleton (May 1200) was signed, and by that treaty he was pledged
to give no help of any kind to Otto without the consent of the French
king.[737] This excuse, indeed, was only temporary; in June 1201 the
Pope recognized Otto as lawful emperor-elect;[738] and though John was
at that very moment renewing his treaty with France, the uncle and
nephew speedily drew together. Throughout the vicissitudes of the next
six years John never lost sight of the community of their interests;
he constantly showed his sense of it by letters and presents, by loans
and gifts of money, and by grants of trading and other privileges in
England to the German and Flemish cities which supported Otto,[739]
as well as by undertaking the custody of at least one prisoner of
importance who belonged to the party of Otto’s rival.[740] Otto, whose
fortunes were gradually rising throughout these years, was so fully
alive to the value of the English alliance that in May 1207 he came
to London for a personal interview with John. It is said that on this
occasion Otto promised to conquer the realm of France and make it over
to his uncle, all except three cities, Paris, Etampes and Orléans,
which Philip Augustus had once jestingly said he would bestow upon Otto
himself if ever the latter became emperor. John gave his nephew six
thousand marks,[741] and received from him the symbolical gift of a
great golden crown.[742] As yet, indeed, Otto was only emperor-elect,
and had the conquest of his own realms to complete ere he could
attempt that of France. But his fortunes were steadily rising; his
rival, Philip of Suabia, was slain in the following summer;[743] and
on October 4, 1209, just at the moment of his uncle’s triumph over the
English Church, he was crowned by the Pope at Rome.[744]
[Sidenote: 1210–1211]
Within a year, however, Pope and Emperor had quarrelled, and Otto was
excommunicated.[745] This was, of course, an additional bond of union
between him and John. At the same time, a kinsman of both princes was
setting the Pope and the French king alike at defiance. Count Raymond
of Toulouse, the husband of John’s sister Joan, had from the outset
favoured the heretics who for the last two years had kept southern
Gaul in turmoil; in 1211 he openly allowed them to concentrate in his
capital city, and headed their resistance to the forces which Innocent
and Philip had sent against them under Simon de Montfort. Toulouse
was besieged, but John and Otto kept their kinsman so well supplied
with the means of defence and sustenance that the “crusaders” at last
grew hopeless of taking it and raised the siege. Otto had answered
the Pope’s excommunication by conquering Tuscia, Apulia and Calabria;
whereupon Innocent published another sentence, deposing him from his
imperial office and his German kingdom, and bidding the princes of the
empire elect a new sovereign in his stead.
[Sidenote: 1211–1212]
John, “with such a comrade,” grew bolder than ever.[746] The common
interest of the three excommunicate kinsmen obviously lay in crushing
France, the ally of the Pope; and the moment seemed at hand for
the fulfilment of John’s highest hopes. John and Raymond in the
south, John and Otto in the north and east, might hem in Philip
Augustus completely, if the princes of the border-land of France and
Germany--Boulogne, Flanders, the Netherlands, Lorraine--could be so
won over as to insure their co-operation in the plans of the uncle
and nephew for the conquest and dismemberment of the French kingdom.
To this end John’s utmost powers of diplomacy had been devoted for
many years past; and in the case of most of these princes the end
was now gained. In the autumn of 1211 Reginald of Boulogne, whose
policy had long been wavering, quarrelled openly with Philip and took
refuge with his kinsman the count of Bar;[747] in May 1212 he was in
England, pledging his homage and his service to John. By the middle
of August the counts of Bar, Limburg, Flanders and Louvain were all
pledged to John’s side.[748] John himself was meanwhile preparing for
an expedition to Gascony; on June 15 thirty-nine English towns were
ordered to furnish contingents of men “ready to cross the sea with the
king in his service when he should require them.”[749]
[Sidenote: 1212]
A month later, however, the destination of his armament was changed.
Just as his plans were ripe for an attack upon France, they were
checked once more by the necessity of guarding his realm against the
Welsh. Before the close of 1211 Llywelyn--provoked, as he declared,
by “the many insults done to him by the men of the king”--had
leagued himself with his former rivals in South Wales and taken
“all the castles which John had made in Gwynedd, except Dyganwy and
Rhuddlan.”[750] And this time the league was more likely to hold
together than was usually the case with alliances formed by the Welsh
princes either with their neighbours or with each other; for a new hope
had dawned upon the Welsh people. The tidings of John’s excommunication
and deposition by the Pope had penetrated into Wales; and in this
matter the Welsh, although of all Christian nations probably the least
amenable to ecclesiastical discipline and the least submissive to
ecclesiastical authority, became full of zeal to do the utmost that in
them lay towards carrying out the Papal sentence against their overlord
and conqueror. “They with one consent,” says their own chronicler,
“rose against the king, and bravely wrested from him the midland
district which he had previously taken from Llywelyn.”[751] The version
of the English chroniclers is that the Welsh invaded the English
border, took some castles and beheaded their garrisons, carried off a
mass of plunder, and then burned everything and slew every man that
they could lay their hands on.[752]
It was clear that an end must be made of this Welsh trouble before
John could venture across the Channel. He changed his plans with his
usual promptitude. In July the king’s escheators throughout England
were ordered to see that the escheats in their custody should furnish
each a certain number of carpenters and other labourers provided with
proper tools, and with money enough to carry them to Chester. Writs
were also issued to Alan of Galloway bidding him send a thousand of his
“best and bravest men,” to William the Marshal, Bishop John of Norwich,
and others of the king’s liegemen in Ireland, and to the tenants by
serjeanty throughout England, requiring their personal attendance; the
place of muster for all alike being Chester, and the appointed date
Sunday, August 19.[753] On August 16, however, the king sent out from
Nottingham a notice that he was unable to be at Chester on the day
fixed, and that the muster would not take place.[754] The orders which
he issued next day indicate that he was contemplating a diversion by
sea, part of the fleet being ordered to sail from Chester, coast along
North Wales, and “do as much harm to the enemy as possible,” while
another part was to assemble at Bristol.[755] He probably meant to
await the result of these movements, as well as of some negotiations
which he was carrying on with the South Welsh chieftains,[756] before
deciding whether his main advance should be made by way of North or
South Wales.
The host finally mustered at Nottingham in the second week of
September.[757] The chivalry of England gathered {Sept. 9–15} round the
king “in such array and in such numbers,” says a contemporary, “that no
man of our day remembers the like.”[758] John’s first act on reaching
the muster-place, “before he tasted food,” was to hang twenty-eight
of the hostages whom he had taken from the Welsh in the previous
year.[759] But “suddenly God brought his counsel to nought.”[760] As
he sat at table there came to him a breathless messenger from the king
of Scots, followed by one from the Princess Joan of Wales, John’s
daughter and Llywelyn’s wife. Both messengers brought letters whose
contents, they said, were weighty and secret. When the two letters
were read, their purport proved to be almost identical. William and
Joan alike warned the king that his barons were preparing to act
upon the papal sentence which absolved them from their allegiance,
and, if he persisted in leading them to war, either to turn and slay
him themselves, or deliver him up to death at the hands of his Welsh
enemies.[761] Such a warning, coming at the same instant from two such
different quarters, was not to be lightly put aside. It was emphasized
by the sudden disappearance of two barons, Eustace de Vesci and
Robert FitzWalter, who at once secretly withdrew from the host.[762]
John could hardly doubt the significance of their departure at such
a moment. He dismissed his army and moved by slow stages back to
London.[763]
The month which had elapsed between John’s order countermanding the
muster at Chester and his return to Nottingham had been spent by him
in a progress through the north;[764] and it was probably during this
time that there came to his ears a prediction concerning him spoken by
one Peter, variously described as “of Pontefract” or “of Wakefield.”
This Peter was “a simple countryman,” who lived on bread and water,
and was counted among the people for a prophet. He foretold that on
the next Ascension Day John should cease to be king. Whether John was
to die, or to be driven from the land, or to abdicate, Peter could not
say; he only knew that it had been revealed to him in a vision that
after the king had reigned prosperously for fourteen years, neither
he nor his heirs should rule any more, “but one who is pleasing to
God.”[765] John, on hearing of this prophecy, laughed it to scorn;
but when Peter was found to be wandering all over the north country
publishing his supposed vision wherever he went, some of the king’s
friends deemed it prudent to take the prophet into custody.[766]
He was brought before John himself, who asked for more explicit
information as to his own impending fate. Peter only replied, “Know
thou of a surety that on the day which I have named, thou shalt be
king no more; and if I be proved a liar, do with me as thou wilt.”
“According to thy word, so be it,” answered John; and he sent the man
to be imprisoned at Corfe.[767] This precaution, however, defeated
its own end; Peter’s captivity in a royal dungeon gave to him and
his prophecy a new importance in popular estimation; his words were
repeated far and wide, and believed “as if they had been spoken by a
voice from Heaven.”[768] The dread which they are said to have inspired
in the king himself[769] proves nothing as to whether, or how far, he
shared the superstitious credulity of his people. Apart from all such
questions, he had obviously a sufficient reason for alarm in the fact
that the general acceptance of a political prophecy naturally tends to
work its fulfilment.
Other influences were working in the same direction. Even without the
special warnings which he had received at Nottingham, John must have
been well aware that he had, as Roger of Wendover says, “almost as many
enemies as he had barons.”[770] The question was only how soon their
silent hate would break out in open defiance, and whether he could once
more terrify or beguile them into submission before the smouldering
embers of their discontent were kindled into a general conflagration
by Innocent’s anathema and Peter’s prophecy. On reaching London he
addressed to all those whose fidelity he suspected a new demand for
hostages, “that he might prove who would and who would not obey his
orders.” The response showed that he was even yet stronger than he
himself had dared to believe. From many of these men he had already
had hostages in his keeping for years; several of them had suffered
in their family relations a far deeper injury at his hands; yet once
again, at his bidding, they gave up to him sons, nephews, kinsmen, “as
many as he would, not daring to resist his commands.”[771] Eustace de
Vesci and Robert Fitz-Walter alone refused all purgation, and fled,
the one to Scotland, the other to France; their castles were seized,
their lands confiscated, and themselves outlawed.[772] With his own
servants and clerks the king dealt in yet more summary fashion; those
among them whom he suspected were arrested and cast into prison.[773]
Fresh humiliations were heaped upon the clergy. The Cistercians are
said to have been mulcted of twenty-two thousand pounds in punishment
for the help which they were supposed to have given to the enemies of
Raymond of Toulouse;[774] and all the English clergy, both regular
and secular, were forced to set their hands to a deed whereby they
renounced all pecuniary claims against the king, and declared that
all the money which he had had from them since his accession was a
free and voluntary gift.[775] On the other hand, John was taking some
pains to conciliate the people. He checked the severity of the Forest
administration. He forbade the extortions practised by his officers on
merchants and pilgrims. “Moreover, he is said to have showed mercy on
widows, and done what in him lay to promote peace in temporal affairs.”
Sternness and conciliation alike did their work. Again “the land kept
silence”;[776] and it seems that the first sound which broke the
silence was a declaration of the barons in favour of the king.
Some time between the summer of 1212 and the spring of 1213 two
remarkable letters were written by John, the one to his chief justiciar
in Ireland, Bishop John of Norwich, the other to Earl William the
Marshal.[777] Both letters deal with the same subjects, and they were
evidently despatched both at once. The king greatly commends the
bishop’s discretion in the matter of “the oath of fealty lately sworn
to us by our barons of Ireland, for the greater safety of ourself and
our realm,” for which, he says, he is sending letters of thanks to
them all. He expresses the warmest gratitude to William the Marshal,
“as their spokesman in this matter, and also as the one from whose
suggestion and sole desire we doubt not this thing took its rise, and
to whom we are indebted for the ready disposition and devotion of all
the rest.” He states further that he is sending to the bishop, the
earl, and the other barons of the March “copies of the letters patent
which our magnates of England have drawn up for us,” and he requests
that the barons of Ireland will “set their seals to letters of similar
tenour, and send them to us.” Lastly, he alludes to some advice which
the Marshal and the other lay barons in Ireland “have sent to us about
making peace with the Church,” and desires that they will “provide,
by the common counsel of our faithful subjects in those parts, a
form whereby peace may be made sure without injury to our liberties
and rights,” and transmit it to him. “See you to it,” he adds to the
justiciar, “that this be done.”[778]
We can hardly doubt that there is some connexion between these letters
and another yet more remarkable document, whose date must lie between
Pandulf’s visit in August 1211 and the spring of 1213. This is a
manifesto addressed “to all faithful Christians” by “the whole of the
magnates of Ireland,” with William the Marshal and Meiler Fitz-Henry
at their head, expressing their “grief and astonishment” that the Pope
should propose to absolve the subjects of the king of England from
their allegiance, and declaring their approval of John’s political
conduct and their determination to “live and die with their king.”[779]
This manifesto may have been drawn up when the barons of the Irish
March, at the Marshal’s suggestion, renewed their fealty to John; or it
may have been their answer to John’s request that they would set their
hands to and transmit to him letters patent similar to those which, he
says, had been “made for him” by the magnates of England. There is,
indeed, another possible alternative. On more than one occasion, and
by more than one chronicler, John is charged with forging letters and
other like documents. The letter ascribed to the magnates of Ireland
and the letters--of which nothing is now known--sent to them by John as
having been issued by the magnates of England may therefore have been
both alike forgeries. There is, however, nothing to indicate that such
was the case. If it was not, then it seems that the barons of England,
who in the autumn of 1212 were believed to be on the verge of rebellion
or something worse, were yet so weak, as well as so false, that John
could force from them a collective declaration in writing which,
whatever its precise import may have been, was evidently a declaration
in his interest and for his advantage; and that in the same crisis the
barons of the Irish March, acting under the guidance of the noblest and
wisest man in their whole order, ranged themselves boldly on the side
of John against all his enemies. The king, to whom for a moment ruin
had seemed so near that he himself gave way to despair, was within a
few months, perhaps even a few weeks, outwardly more than ever supreme.
On the other hand, those same loyal barons in Ireland who seem to
have so emphatically declared their resolve to stand by the king in
resistance to the papal sentence of deposition had yet urged upon
him the importance of procuring a withdrawal of that sentence by
endeavouring to make peace with the Church. Whether they did, according
to John’s request, draft a form of proposals to be laid before the
Pope, there is nothing to show; but it is certain that in November John
despatched to Rome four envoys charged to offer his acceptance of the
terms which Pandulf and Durand had proposed fifteen months before.[780]
[Sidenote: 1212–13]
John, in fact, knew well how unsubstantial his apparent supremacy was,
and how hollow were the foundations on which it rested. He knew that if
he wished to prevent the fulfilment of Peter’s prophecy, he must now
disarm once for all, and secure permanently for his own interest, some
one at least of the various enemies, or groups of enemies, against whom
he had been struggling for six years at such overwhelming odds. By the
end of 1212 the signs of the times were beginning to point out who this
one must be; by the early spring of 1213 there could no longer be any
doubt on the point. The fortunes of war in Germany and in southern Gaul
had shattered John’s hopes of crushing Innocent and Philip Augustus
both at once. In Aquitaine Simon de Montfort and his “crusaders” were
gradually winning their way against the Albigenses, and Raymond of
Toulouse was practically ruined. In Germany the young King Frederic
of Sicily had at the Pope’s instigation been elected to the empire
in Otto’s stead. Otto sought to regain his footing in the country by
marrying the daughter of his former rival, {August} Duke Philip of
Suabia; but the bride died a few days after her marriage;[781] and in
November (1212) the political league which Innocent was building up
against Otto and John was completed by a treaty of alliance between
Frederic and Philip Augustus.[782] Triumphant everywhere on the
continent, Innocent resolved to make an end of matters with John. In
the winter of 1212 Stephen Langton and the bishops of Ely and London
carried to Rome in person their complaints against their sovereign,
and their entreaties that such a state of things should be suffered to
continue no longer. In January 1213 they returned to the French court
accompanied by Pandulf, and bringing with them a letter from the Pope
to the French king.[783] Innocent in this letter solemnly laid upon
Philip, for his soul’s health, the task of expelling the English king
from his realm, and bade him assume in John’s stead the sovereignty
of England for himself and his heirs for ever.[784] It is said that
the Pope wrote at the same time to the other sovereigns and princes
of Europe, bidding them join under Philip’s leadership in a sort of
crusade against John, and granting to all who should take part in this
expedition the same privileges, temporal and spiritual, which were
conferred on pilgrims to the Holy Sepulchre.[785]
These letters and the papal decree for John’s deposition were publicly
read to the French bishops, clergy and people in a council assembled
for that purpose at Soissons on the Monday in Holy Week, April 8.[786]
It was no new idea that the papal mandate suggested to Philip Augustus.
For a whole year at least he had been contemplating the conquest of
England and the establishment of his eldest son, Louis, upon its
throne; in April 1212 Louis had already arranged the terms on which
he would receive the homage of the English barons and the political
relation in which he was to stand towards his father after his own
coronation in England.[787] To Philip and Louis the Pope’s commission
was merely the signal that their longed-for hour had come. “Then the
king of the French, hearing and receiving the thing which he had long
desired, girded himself up for the fight,” and bade all his men, on
pain of “culvertage,” be ready to meet him at Rouen on April 21, the
first Sunday after Easter;[788] and ships, victuals, arms and men were
rapidly gathered together in answer to his call.[789]
[Sidenote: 1213]
Still more prompt and vigorous were John’s preparations for defence.
He seems to have begun by ordering that all English ships should
return to the ports to which they severally belonged not later than
the first Sunday in Lent, March 3. On that day he despatched writs to
the bailiffs of the seaport towns, bidding them make out a list of the
vessels which they found in their respective ports capable of carrying
six horses or more, and direct the captains and owners of all such
vessels, in his name, to bring them to Portsmouth at Mid-Lent (March
21), “well manned with good and brave mariners, well armed, who shall
go on our service at our expense.”[790] He next bade the sheriffs
summon all earls, barons, knights, freemen and sergeants, whosoever
they were and of whomsoever they held, who ought to have arms or could
get them, and who had done him homage and fealty, to the intent that,
“as they love us and themselves and all that is theirs, they be at
Dover at the close of Easter next, well prepared with horses and arms
and with all their might to defend our head, and their own heads, and
the land of England. And let no man who can bear arms stay behind, on
pain of culvertage and perpetual servitude; and let each man follow
his own lord; and let those who have no land and can carry arms come
thither to take our pay.” Each sheriff was to see that all sales of
victuals and all markets within his sheriffdom “followed the host,”
and that none were held elsewhere within his jurisdiction. He himself
was to come to the muster “in force, with horses and arms,” and to
bring his roll, whereby the king might be certified who had obeyed his
summons and who had stayed behind.[791]
England responded as quickly and readily as France to the call of
her king; the threat of “culvertage” seems to have acted upon the
Englishmen of John’s day as the threat of being accounted “nithing” had
acted upon their forefathers in the days of William Rufus and Henry I.;
they came together at the appointed places--Dover, Faversham and
Ipswich--in such crowds that in a few days, despite John’s precautions,
the supply of food became insufficient, and the marshals of the host
found it needful to dismiss the greater part of the light-armed troops,
retaining only the knights, sergeants and better-armed freemen, with
the cross-bowmen and archers. The picked body thus left, which was
finally reviewed by the king on Barham Down, near Canterbury, {May 4–6}
was still so numerous that a patriotic chronicler declares, “If they
had been all of one heart and mind for king and country, there was
no prince under heaven against whom they could not have defended the
realm of England.”[792] How many of the barons in the host had come to
it with the intention of going over to Philip as soon as he landed,
it is useless to inquire; perhaps the only one whom we can with full
confidence acquit of any such suspicion is William the Marshal.[793]
The king’s plan, however, was that his fleet should intercept the
invaders and “drown them in the sea before ever they could set foot on
the land”; and as his ships were more numerous than Philip’s, the plan
had a good chance of success.[794]
But the first check to Philip’s enterprise was to come from another
quarter. Even if we could perceive no outward indication of the Pope’s
motives in giving his commission to the French king, we should still
find it hard to believe that so far-seeing a statesman as Innocent III.
seriously contemplated with approval the prospect of a French conquest
of England. At the moment, indeed, France was the most efficient
political instrument of the Papacy; but it could scarcely be a part of
the papal policy to give her such an overwhelming predominance as she
would have acquired by the annexation of England to her crown. England,
no less than France, had her place in the European political system, of
which Innocent looked upon himself as the director and the guardian;
and the extinction of England as an independent state would have
destroyed the balance of powers which it was a special function of the
Papacy to maintain with the utmost care, and whose preservation was of
great importance to Innocent for carrying into effect his own political
designs. There can hardly be a reasonable doubt that he made use of
Philip’s ambition for a purpose of his own, a purpose which was really
the direct opposite of that which Philip had in view--the purpose, not
of crushing England, but of winning her back to the Roman alliance, and
thus securing her as a counterpoise, in case of need, to the power of
Philip himself.[795] In a word, Innocent and John had simultaneously
recognized the fact that, in the interest of both alike, the time for
their reconciliation had come.
John, as we have seen, had paved the way by offering, at the close
of 1212, his acceptance of the terms proposed by the Pope in 1211.
Innocent’s reply to this offer was written on February 27, 1213.
Although, he said, he considered himself no longer bound by his own
terms, since the king had rejected them, yet for the sake of peace he
was willing to abide by the form of agreement thus again proposed, if
before June 1 the king would, by an oath sworn in his presence by four
barons, and by letters patent addressed to the archbishop of Canterbury
and the other exiled bishops, promise to keep it faithfully and fulfil
it effectually, “according to the expositions and explanations which
we have thought good to be set forth for the removal of all scruple
and doubt.” In May, when all England was expecting the attack of
Philip Augustus, three of John’s messengers brought back from Rome
this letter, together with a copy of the form originally committed
to Pandulf and Durand, and the “expositions and explanations” of the
arrangements now required on both sides to insure its execution.[796]
All these documents seem to have been communicated to Pandulf in
a private interview which he had with the Pope on the eve of his
departure from Rome in January;[797] at any rate he was well aware of
their contents and fully instructed how to act in consequence. Just
as the French fleet was ready to sail, he in the Pope’s name forbade
all further proceedings against England till he should have once more
appealed to John and learned whether he would yet repent.[798] Close
upon the return of the English envoys from Rome followed two Templars,
who landed at Dover with a message from Pandulf to the king, requesting
an interview. It took place at Dover on May 13. In presence of king
and legate, the earls of Salisbury, Warren, and Ferrars and the count
of Boulogne swore in John’s behalf the oath of security required by
Innocent; and on the same day John published by letters patent the
agreement concluded between himself and Pandulf in the form which the
Pope had prescribed.[799]
Two days later--on Wednesday, May 15--king and legate met again, “with
the great men of the realm,” in the house of the Knights Templars
at Ewell, near Dover. There, by a charter attested by himself, the
archbishop of Dublin, the chief justiciars of England and Ireland,
seven earls (of whom the Marshal was one), and three barons, the king
“granted and freely surrendered to God and His holy Apostles Peter and
Paul, and to the Holy Mother Church of Rome, and to Pope Innocent and
his Catholic successors,” the whole realm of England and “the whole
realm of Ireland,” with all rights thereunto appertaining, to receive
them back and hold them thenceforth as a feudatary of God and the
Roman Church. He swore fealty to the Pope for both realms in Pandulf’s
presence, promised to perform liege homage to the Pope in person if
he should ever have an opportunity of so doing, and pledged all his
successors to a like engagement, besides undertaking to furnish the
Roman see with a yearly sum of one thousand marks--seven hundred for
England and three hundred for Ireland.[800]
One English chronicler says that John, in performing this homage, acted
“according to what had been decreed at Rome.”[801] Another, not less
generally accurate and well informed, says that John “added it of his
own accord” to the agreement already completed.[802] On the whole,
it is probable that this latter account of the matter is the correct
one, at least thus far, that the scheme originated not at Rome, but
in England. Not much weight can indeed be attached to the king’s own
assertion, made in the charter of homage itself, that the act was a
voluntary one, which he had done by way of penance and humiliation for
his offences, “not urged by force nor compelled by fear, but of our
own good free will and by the common counsel of our barons”;[803] nor
is the accuracy of this version of the transaction proved by the fact
that Innocent accepted it without remark in his reply to John’s letters
on the subject,[804] and that no extant document emanating from the
court of Rome contains the slightest indication that the Pope had ever
demanded or suggested any proceeding of the kind. There is, however,
no perceptible reason why Innocent should have required of John a
penance of so extraordinary a character, nor why, if he did require
it, either he or his royal penitent should make a secret of his having
done so. On the other hand, John had a very cogent reason for “adding
something of his own” to the agreement between himself and Innocent.
If he was to give up all for which he had been fighting--and fighting
successfully--against the Pope and the Church for the last six years,
he must make quite sure of gaining such an advantage as would be worth
the sacrifice. Mere release from excommunication and interdict was
certainly, in his eyes, not worth any sacrifice at all. To change the
Pope from an enemy into a political friend was worth it, but--from
John’s point of view--only if the friendship could be made something
much more close and indissoluble than the ordinary official relation
between the Pope and every Christian sovereign. He must bind the Pope
to his personal interest by some special tie of such a nature that the
interest of the Papacy itself would prevent Innocent from casting it
off or breaking it. For a sovereign of John’s character no additional
sacrifice would be involved in the device which he actually employed
for this purpose. To outward personal humiliation of any kind John was
absolutely indifferent, when there was any advantage to be gained by
undergoing it. To any humiliation which the Crown or the nation might
suffer in his person, he was indifferent under all circumstances. His
plighted faith he had never had a moment’s hesitation in breaking,
whether it were sworn to his father, his brother, his allies, or his
people, and which he would break with equal facility when sworn to the
supreme Pontiff; moreover, he took the precaution of inserting in his
charter a saving clause which he could easily have interpreted, had
occasion ever arisen, so as to reduce the whole transaction to a mere
empty form.[805] There seems, in short, to be good reason for believing
that John’s homage to the Pope was offered without any pressure from
Rome, and on grounds of deliberate policy.[806]
How far the credit or discredit--whichever it be--of that policy
belongs to John is, however, a question not easily solved. Two
years later, the English barons seem to have claimed the credit for
themselves. We are told that they besought the Pope, “as he was lord
of England,” to take their part against John, “since he well knew
that they had at his command boldly opposed the king in behalf of the
Church’s liberty, and that the king had granted an annual revenue to
Rome, and bestowed other honours on the Pope and the Roman Church,
not of his own accord, but only out of fear and under compulsion from
them.”[807]
This, if correctly reported, is a distinct assertion by the malcontent
barons that they had deliberately chosen to set up the Pope as temporal
overlord of their country, and that it was pressure from them which
had compelled John to do him homage as such. The truth probably lies
half-way between this version and that of the king. Whether the “common
counsel of the barons” was given spontaneously to John and accepted by
him, or whether it was merely a response to a proposal which he had
laid before them, there can be little doubt that each party adopted the
scheme in the hope of turning it to account against the other party.
That on the side of the barons this hope proved utterly delusive, while
on the side of John it was completely realized, simply shows once more
how far less than a match was the collective sagacity of the barons for
the single-handed dexterity of the king.
It was not till many years later that a great historian, who was also a
vehement partisan, denounced John’s homage to the Pope as “a thing to
be detested for all time.”[808] The Barnwell annalist, writing at the
time of the event, tells us indeed that “to many it seemed ignominious,
and a heavy yoke of servitude.” But the action of all parties at the
moment was a practical acknowledgement of their consciousness that, as
the same annalist says, John “by this act provided prudently both for
himself and for his people; for matters were in such a strait, and so
great was the fear on all sides, that there was no more ready way of
evading the imminent peril--perhaps no other way at all. For when once
he had put himself under Apostolical protection, and made his realms
a part of the patrimony of S. Peter, there was not in the Roman world
a sovereign who durst attack him, or invade them; inasmuch as Pope
Innocent was universally held in awe above all his predecessors for
many years past.”[809]
John had, in fact, at one stroke cut the ground from under the feet
of all his enemies both at home and abroad. The people resumed their
ordinary attitude of loyalty on Pandulf’s assurance that it was once
more, and more than ever, sanctioned by the Church. The traitor barons
found themselves without a cloak for their treason, and were reduced
to send out letters patent repudiating all connexion with the French
king.[810] Philip found himself without an ally, and without an excuse
for his enterprise. The believers in Peter of Wakefield, indeed, still
looked forward with a vague expectation to Ascension Day {May 23}. But
the king himself could meet its dawn without fear. He had ordered his
royal tent to be set up in a large open field, and caused his heralds
to proclaim a general invitation to all who were within reach, to come
and spend the festival day in stately festivities with him. “And a
right joyous day it was, the king taking his pleasure and making merry
with the bishops and nobles who had come together at his call.”[811]
Still Peter’s disciples were not convinced; some of them took up the
idea that the prediction might refer not to the ecclesiastical but to
the civil anniversary of John’s coronation, May 27, which in 1213 was
four days after Ascension Day. This anniversary, however, passed over
likewise without any mishap. Then the wise and the foolish alike began
to see that John had prevented a literal fulfilment of the prophecy
by lending himself to a figurative one. He had “ceased to be king”
by laying his crown at the feet of Pandulf, to take it back again
on conditions which unquestionably helped to fix it, for the time
at least, more securely than ever on his brow. The scapegoat of all
parties was the unlucky prophet himself. Next day he and his son, who
had been imprisoned with him, were tied each to a horse’s tail, dragged
thus from Corfe to Wareham, and there hanged.[812]
Pandulf meanwhile had returned to France, and commanded Philip, on
pain of the Pope’s displeasure, to lay aside all thoughts of invading
England and go home in peace. Philip at first indignantly refused
to abandon a scheme which, he said, he had planned at the Pope’s
instigation, and for which he had already spent more than sixty
thousand pounds.[813] But he dared not go on in the teeth of the papal
prohibition; so he turned his wrath upon the one great feudatary of his
realm who had refused to take part in the projected invasion, Count
Ferrand of Flanders. Ordering his fleet to sail round as quickly as
possible to Swine, the king dashed into Flanders at the head of all
his forces. Ferrand besought help of John, with whom he was already in
alliance; and John at once despatched five hundred ships, carrying a
large body of horse and foot under the command of his half-brother Earl
William of Salisbury and the counts of Holland and Boulogne.[814] They
sailed on Tuesday, May 28, intending to land at Swine and march across
the country to join Ferrand; but a contrary wind delayed them so that
they did not reach Swine till Thursday, the 30th; and then, to their
amazement, they found the harbour occupied by the French fleet, which,
however, they soon discovered to be unguarded save by a few seamen, all
the troops having gone ashore to ravage the neighbourhood. Salisbury
at once ordered an attack; the French sailors were speedily overcome;
three hundred ships laden with provisions were set drifting towards
England, a hundred more were rifled of their contents and then set on
fire. “Never came so much wealth into England since King Arthur went
to conquer it,” says a contemporary poet.[815] Next day Count Ferrand
came to meet his allies, and renewed his league with John.[816] On the
Saturday--Whitsun Eve--the earls disembarked their troops and advanced
to attack the French at Dam. The overwhelming numbers of the enemy,
who were headed by King Philip himself, compelled them to retreat.
Salisbury, however, not only escaped to his ships, but brought all
his prizes safe to England;[817] while Philip was so mad with rage
at the disaster to his fleet that he ordered the remnant of it to be
burnt.[818] So far as England was concerned, his expedition was at an
end.
John at once resolved that the fleet and the host which had been
gathered for the defence of England should be used for an attack upon
France. His plan was, while strengthening Ferrand’s hands so as to keep
Philip busy in Flanders, himself to land with an army in Poitou, and
thus place the French kingdom between two fires. At the end of June
he reassembled his forces at Porchester, and again despatched William
of Salisbury to Flanders with further reinforcements and large sums
of money. The magnates, however, refused to accompany the king over
sea till he was absolved from excommunication.[819] Their excuse was
transparently false; his public absolution was indeed committed to
Archbishop Stephen, and therefore deferred till Stephen’s arrival in
England; but Pandulf had, in the Pope’s name, declared him reconciled
to the Church. It could only be from political motives that men who had
without protest marched with the excommunicate king against Scotland,
Ireland and Wales, and gathered year after year at his festival
banquets, now suddenly became more punctilious about a matter of
ecclesiastical discipline than Innocent III. himself. It was, however,
no moment for quarrelling with them openly; and their excuse, such as
it was, soon ceased to exist.
King and legate had been rapidly pushing on the arrangements for the
return of the exiles;[820] and in June or July Archbishop Stephen
and four of the bishops landed at Dover.[821] On S. Margaret’s Day,
Saturday, July 20, they were received by the king at Winchester.[822]
He seems to have gone forth to meet them on the crest of the hill which
lies to the east of the city.[823] He threw himself at the primate’s
feet, bidding him welcome, and with tears imploring his mercy; “and
the prelates and all the rest, when they saw this, could not refrain
from weeping.” The procession made its way to the Old Minster and
entered the chapter-house; the king swore on the Gospels “that he
would cherish, defend and maintain the holy Church and her ordained
ministers; that he would restore the good laws of his forefathers,
especially S. Edward’s, rendering to all men their rights; and that
before the next Easter he would make full restitution of all property
which had been taken away in connexion with the Interdict.” This oath
he seems to have repeated publicly at the door of the church; Stephen
then formally absolved him, led him into the church, and celebrated
mass in his presence, accepting his offering and giving him the kiss of
peace; “and there was great joy among the people.”[824]
Having at last made up his mind to a formal reconciliation with
both Pope and primate, John showed no signs of a wish to evade any
part of its terms. During the past three months order after order
had been issued in his name for carrying into effect the provisions
of his agreement with Pandulf. The outlawry of the clergy had been
revoked at once, on May 15, and this revocation was repeated on June
13.[825] Two laymen--Eustace de Vesci and Robert Fitz-Walter--who
had gone into exile, not in company with any of the bishops nor for
their sake, but on independent grounds, in the autumn of 1212, had
been specially mentioned by name in John’s agreement with the Pope,
and promised reinstatement in their lands and in the king’s favour.
Safe-conducts were issued to these two barons on May 27, and orders
for the restitution of their property on July 17, 19, and 21.[826] For
the bishops something more than mere restitution was required; they,
or the Pope and Pandulf for them, claimed indemnification as well;
and the terms of the indemnity were difficult to decide. John seems
to have proposed that they should be decided by a kind of general
inquest; on the day {July 21} after his absolution he bade all the
sheriffs in England cause a deputation of four men and the reeve from
each township to be at S. Albans on August 4, “that through them and
his other ministers he might ascertain the truth concerning the damages
suffered by the several bishops, and what had been taken from them, and
how much was due to each.” Whether such an inquisition was actually
held does not appear; but early in August the justiciar and the bishop
of Winchester met the primate, the other bishops and the magnates in
a great council at S. Albans; there, in the king’s name, peace was
proclaimed to all; the observance of King Henry’s laws and the disuse
of evil customs were strictly enjoined; and the sheriffs, foresters,
and other officers of the Crown were warned, “as they valued their
limbs and their lives,” to commit no more extortions and wrongs, “as
they had been wont to do.”[827]
John meanwhile had returned to the coast of Dorset, where the host had
apparently been ordered to reassemble, with the intention of sailing
for Poitou. In view of his own expected absence from England, he is
said to have committed the government to the justiciar and the bishop
of Winchester, bidding them “order all its affairs with the advice of
the archbishop of Canterbury.”[828] The king’s departure, however,
now met with a new series of checks. First the knights came to him in
a body and protested that the months which had elapsed since they
assembled for defence against the French had consumed all their money,
so that they could not possibly follow him any farther unless he would
pay their expenses. This he refused to do.[829] The barons of the north
were the next recalcitrants; when called upon to accompany him over
sea, they “with one mind and determination refused, asserting that
according to the tenure of their lands they were not bound to him in
this; besides that they were already too much worn out and impoverished
by expeditions within the realm.”[830] The angry king embarked with
his household on August 5 or 6, and sailed to Jersey; but finding
that no one followed him thither he soon came back,[831] in a mighty
rage, “cursing the day and hour when he had consented to the peace,
and declaring that he had been deceived, and made a gazing-stock for
nothing.”[832] His mercenaries and foreign auxiliaries were still a
formidable host; and with these he set out for the north, “to bring
back the rebels to their obedience.”[833] He seems to have landed at
Corfe on August 9; he began his northward march from Winchester on
the 16th, reached Wallingford on the 25th, and Northampton on the
28th.[834] On the 25th Archbishop Stephen was in London, presiding over
a great council in S. Paul’s Cathedral.[835] Thence he hurried away in
pursuit of the king; he overtook him at Northampton, and remonstrated
vigorously against John’s plans of vengeance upon the northern barons,
telling him he would bring contempt upon the oath which he had sworn
before his absolution if he made war upon any man without a legal
sentence. John “with a great clamour” declared that he would not put
off the business of his realm for the archbishop, who had no concern
with matters of lay jurisdiction; and early next morning he set out,
“in a furious temper,” for Nottingham. The archbishop followed him,
and threatened that unless the project were at once given up he would
excommunicate every man, save the king himself, who should take part
in any military expedition so long as the interdict continued in force;
nor could John shake him off till he had appointed a day for the
accused barons to come and stand their trial in his court.[836]
Characteristically, John behaved as if unconscious of defeat. He
carried out his progress through the north in peaceable instead
of warlike guise, and did not return to London till the end of
September.[837] His arrival there was timed to coincide with that
of the papal legate who came as the specially appointed minister
of England’s restoration to the communion of the Church, and whose
authority would for the time supersede that of the primate. On
September 27 Cardinal Nicolas of Tusculum landed in England.[838] On
the 30th he met the king, bishops and barons at a council in London,
to discuss plans for a pecuniary settlement between the Crown and the
clergy. John offered the bishops one hundred thousand marks down, with
security for the payment before next Easter of any damages in excess of
that sum which might be discovered on further investigation. The legate
urged the bishops to accept this offer; but they preferred to accept
nothing till they had prepared their own estimate and could demand the
sum total at once; and the king readily consented to the delay. Three
days had been spent in the discussion. On the fourth day, October 3,
the council reassembled in S. Paul’s. At the foot of the high altar, in
the sight of clergy and people, the ceremony which John and Pandulf had
gone through at Ewell was repeated by John and Nicolas. John resigned
his crown into the legate’s hands, received it back from him, and swore
fealty to him as the Pope’s representative; and the charter of homage
and tribute, which had been temporarily sealed with wax and delivered
to Pandulf, was sealed with gold and finally made over to Nicolas, “for
the benefit of the Pope and the Roman Church.”[839]
Still the interdict could not be raised till the settlement between
the Crown and the bishops was completed; and another meeting for this
purpose was appointed to take place at Reading on November 3. To this
meeting all the interested parties came, except the king,[840] who was
at Wallingford, where it seems he had appointed the northern barons
to appear before his court on All Saints’ Day. The legate was there
too, and through his mediation the barons were reconciled to the king
and admitted to the kiss of peace.[841] As John did not show himself
at Reading, the bishops went to Wallingford in their turn. By that
time John had moved on to Woodstock; but he seems to have returned
to Wallingford to meet them for a few hours on November 5,[842] and
repeated his former proposals. These, however, “seemed little to
those who had had their castles razed, their houses levelled with the
ground, and their woods cut down”; so that it was decided to refer the
matter to the arbitration of four barons. But this arbitration never
took place. “All the parties concerned in the matter of the interdict”
came together again at Reading on December 6,[843] and each of the
injured persons brought forth a schedule of the amount of his losses
and damages; the legate, however, supported the king in his refusal to
pay the whole sum at once; and after three days’ deliberation no one
received anything at all, except the archbishop and the five bishops
who had been in exile beyond the sea, to whom John on December 12
ordered the payment of fifteen thousand marks.[844] At last it seems to
have been agreed that the damages should be investigated by two sets
of commissioners acting together, one set appointed by the king, the
other by the primate, and that the sum to be paid by the Crown should
be fixed--doubtless on the report of these commissioners--by the Pope;
and this scheme was carried out in the following year.[845]
[Sidenote: 1213–14]
Other questions had arisen in connexion with the settlement between
Church and king. There were no less than six vacant sees and thirteen
vacant abbeys,[846] all, of course, in the king’s hands. In July 1213
John issued orders for filling these vacancies in the manner which
had been customary under Henry II.; the several chapters were bidden
to send delegates, by whom an election was to be made in the king’s
presence, wherever he might chance to be.[847] This arrangement
implied a tacit understanding that the delegates were to elect a
candidate designated by the king. The bishops seized their opportunity
to protest against this practice and claim for the churches their
canonical right of free election, subject only to the royal assent,
signified by the grant of the regalia. The legate seems to have been,
passively at least, on the side of the Crown; but John was anxious to
avoid any fresh quarrel with the primate, and he therefore allowed
the elections to be left in abeyance till Nicolas should receive
instructions about the matter from the Pope. These came at last in a
somewhat ambiguous form. Innocent bade Nicolas cause the vacant sees
and abbeys to be filled with men “not only distinguished for their
good life and learning, but also faithful to the king and useful as
helpers and advisers for the welfare of the realm, and appointed by
means of canonical election or postulation, the king’s assent being
sought thereunto.”[848] It was obviously possible to interpret this
letter as sanctioning, by implication at least, the claims of the
Crown; and Nicolas was quite willing thus to interpret it in John’s
favour. John, however, knew that no such interpretation would ever be
accepted by Langton; and with Langton he had no mind to quarrel at
that moment, even though he might have the legate on his own side. He
did indeed issue on January 2, 1214, orders for the election of a
bishop to Worcester and an abbot to Eynsham, “according to the customs
of the realm”;[849] but he seems to have immediately afterwards made
an arrangement with the archbishop which satisfied the latter for the
time being. On the 12th John signified to Stephen his acceptance of
“the form known to us concerning the making of elections, saving our
right in all things”; he abandoned his claim to have the elections
held only in his own presence, and delegated the power of giving them
the royal assent to the ministers who were to have the charge of the
realm during his absence beyond the sea; and he closed his letter to
the archbishop with the words: “Be assured that there is no controversy
between us.”[850] On the 26th he wrote again to Stephen, requesting him
to confirm the election of the vice-chancellor, Walter de Gray, to the
see of Worcester, and issued orders for elections to five bishoprics
and three great abbeys.[851]
[Sidenote: 1213]
What made both John and Stephen anxious for an agreement on this
point was the king’s approaching departure for the Continent. Soon
after Stephen’s arrival in England John had made up his mind that
his expedition to Poitou must be postponed till the spring,[852]
and in August (1213) he fixed February 2, 1214, as its approximate
date.[853] Throughout the autumn and winter the fleet was preparing at
Portsmouth under the superintendence of William de Wrotham, archdeacon
of Taunton.[854] Arrangements were also in progress for securing
the tranquillity of the realm during the king’s absence. On June 3
John--according to his own account at Pandulf’s desire--had made a
truce with the Welsh to last till August 1.[855] By August 25 he had
enlisted the aid of the newly arrived primate as a peacemaker between
the English realm and these troublesome neighbours; the wardens of the
Marches were authorized to agree to a prolongation of the truce till
November 1, on the understanding that at its expiration the archbishop
of Canterbury would negotiate with the Welsh on the king’s behalf.[856]
Of these negotiations there is no further record; but they seem to have
resulted in keeping the Welsh in check for some months at least.
In Ireland and in England John had to provide himself with new
vicegerents. In July Bishop John of Norwich resigned the justiciarship
of the Irish March to go to Rome on a mission for the king; the
archbishop of Dublin was appointed justiciar in his stead.[857] On
October 14 the office of chief justiciar of England was vacated by the
death of Geoffrey Fitz-Peter,[858] who had held it ever since 1198,
when he was appointed to it by Richard on the resignation of Hubert
Walter. It is impossible to regard Geoffrey as a patriot; had he been
one, he could scarcely have held the reins of government under John for
fourteen years without coming into open conflict with his master. He
was, however, a man of much weight in the land by reason of his noble
birth, his great wealth, and his knowledge of law, and also because he
was connected by kindred, affinity or friendship with all the great
baronial houses. Such a man was necessarily somewhat of a check upon
the self-will of John. The king’s personal feeling towards his minister
found a characteristic expression when he heard of Geoffrey’s death:
“When he gets to hell,” laughed John, “he may greet Archbishop Hubert,
whom he is sure to meet there!”[859] So long as the king was himself
in England he could do without any justiciar at all; and accordingly
no successor was appointed to Geoffrey for more than three months.
John was, however, too cautious to venture upon any glaring abuse of
his newly acquired freedom of action[860] at a moment when it was
of the utmost importance for him to conciliate all parties and all
classes by every means in his power. The one recorded incident of this
period of John’s personal government, indeed, looks almost like a dim
foreshadowing of one of the most weighty innovations which were to be
made by the constitutional reformers of the latter part of the century.