JOHN AND THE BARONS
1214–1215
Ki ore vaurroit oïr l’ocoison de la guerre dont li rois Jehans
moru deshiretés de la plus grant partie d’Engletierre, bien le
poroit oïr en cest escrit.
_Hist. des Ducs de Normandie_, p. 145.
Intervenientibus itaque archiepiscopo Cantuariensi cum pluribus
coepiscopis et baronibus nonnullis, quasi pax inter regem et barones
formata est.
R. COGGESHALL, p. 172.
[Sidenote: 1214]
On May 26, 1214, John had issued writs for the collection of a scutage
of three marks per fee from all tenants-in-chief, royal demesnes,
vacant bishoprics, lands in royal wardship, and escheats, except those
fees which were personally represented in the army in Poitou; on these
the scutage was, as usual, to be remitted by royal warrant.[926] Those
northern barons who had refused to serve now refused to pay. They
adhered to their contention that they were by their tenure exempt
from the obligation to foreign service, and they argued that, in
consequence, they were also exempt from the obligation to payment in
substitution for such service.[927] Whether they claimed this double
exemption as a privilege peculiar to themselves, or as common to the
whole baronage, is not quite clear. In either case the claim would
have been difficult, if not impossible, to prove. There is nothing to
indicate that the fiefs in northern England had been originally granted
on different conditions from those in the south. On the other hand,
there are, indeed, some slight indications of the possible existence
in some quarters, in the days of both Richard and Henry, of a theory
that the obligation to foreign service--and therefore to payment of
scutage for a foreign war--did not form part of the regular obligations
of military tenure; in other words, that tenants-in-chivalry were not
legally bound to serve in, or to pay for, any war save one of defence.
But no general attempt had ever been made even to formulate such a
theory, far less to carry it out to its logical consequences; and it
is obvious that those consequences would have made it practically
impossible for the kings of England to carry on any continental warfare
at all. When John in reply to the northern recalcitrants insisted that
“it always used to be so done”--that is, foreign service had been
rendered or scutage paid in its stead--in his father’s and brother’s
days,[928] he was unquestionably right; and he might have added that it
had also been so done, over and over again, in the early years of his
own reign. The protest of the northern barons seems to have been made
to him in a personal meeting very soon after his return to England;
we are told that “the matter would have gone further, had it not
been checked by the presence of the legate.” It seems indeed to have
gone further notwithstanding that obstacle, for the same chronicler
adds: “There was brought forth a certain charter of liberties given
to the English by Henry I., which the said barons asked the king to
confirm.”[929]
[Sidenote: 1213]
If we may believe a report which was current a few years later, this
demand had been first suggested to the barons, more than a year
before, by Archbishop Stephen of Canterbury. On August 25, 1213; he
had gathered the bishops, abbots and other ecclesiastical dignitaries,
with some of the lay magnates, around him in S. Paul’s cathedral that
they might receive his instructions concerning a partial relaxation of
the interdict, which he was empowered to grant, pending the arrival of
the legate. It was said[930] that he had afterwards called aside the
lay members of the assembly to a secret meeting in which he laid before
them a yet weightier matter. “Ye have heard”--thus he was reported to
have addressed them--“how, when I absolved the king at Winchester, I
made him swear to put down bad laws and enforce throughout his realm
the good laws of Edward. Now, there has been found also a certain
charter of King Henry I. by which, if ye will, ye may recall to their
former estate the liberties which ye have so long lost”:--and he caused
the document in question--the coronation-charter of Henry I.--to be
read aloud before them. “And when this charter had been read through
and interpreted to the barons, they rejoiced with very great joy, and
all swore in the archbishop’s presence that when they saw a fitting
time they would fight for those liberties, if it were needful, even
unto death; the archbishop, too, promised them his most faithful help
to the utmost of his power. And, a confederacy being thus made between
them, the conference was dissolved.”[931] This story is given by Roger
of Wendover only as a rumour; but whether the rumour were literally
true or not, it was at any rate founded upon a fact: the fact that the
movement which was to result in the Great Charter owed its true impulse
to the patriotism, as it owed its success to the statesmanship, not of
any of the barons, but of Stephen Langton.
[Sidenote: 1214]
During eight months out of the fourteen which elapsed between the
archbishop’s return and that of the king, the administration of
government was in the hands of Peter des Roches, and he ruled the
country with a rod of iron.[932] But Peter’s vice-regal tyranny was
only the final outcome of a state of things which had been growing
worse from year to year for more than a quarter of a century. England
in the sixteenth year of King John was suffering under an accumulation
of grievances consisting, as Ralph of Coggeshall truly says, of all
“the evil customs which the king’s father and brother had raised up for
the oppression of the Church and realm, together with the abuses which
the king himself had added thereto.”[933] No doubt these last formed
the worst part of the evil, and it was the addition of them that
gave such an increase of bitterness to all the rest. The obligation
laid upon all men to attend the Forest courts, when summoned, whether
subject to their jurisdiction or not, had been a hardship ever since
it was imposed by Henry II. in 1184; the working of the Forest laws
had been a source of suffering from a period much earlier still; but
the area of the hardship and the suffering was rendered more extensive
by the new afforestations made by John.[934] The inconvenience caused
by the old practice of making common pleas “follow the king”--that
is, of holding trials of civil causes only before the justices who
accompanied the king, wheresoever he might be--had been felt in Henry’s
time, and Henry had tried to remedy it by setting up a permanent bench
of justices in a fixed place to deal with such causes. But the right
retained by the sovereign of calling up suits from this tribunal to his
own presence was exercised by John to a degree which his restless and
erratic movements--almost more restless and erratic than those of his
father--seem to have rendered extremely vexatious to litigants.[935]
The precise limits of the king’s rights over his tenants-in-chief as to
military service, scutage, control over their castles, and such-like
matters, had been more or less in dispute throughout the two preceding
reigns; but the bitterness of such disputes was intensified by John’s
personal dealings with his barons, his subtle contrivances for stealing
from them their rights over their own tenants and their own lands, his
interference with their domestic life by his continual demands for
hostages, and, above all, in many cases, by a desecration of their
homes which blood alone could expiate.
Again, the corrupt administration of the sheriffs had been matter of
complaint under Henry; but it was far worse under John; for whereas
Henry, and after him Hubert Walter acting for Richard, had endeavoured
by various means to check the independent action and curtail the powers
of the sheriffs, now the king himself was almost openly in league with
those officers, and their usurpations and extortions were not merely
condoned, but encouraged, if not even directly instigated, by him for
his own interest. Owing to the rise in the value of land and a variety
of other causes, the sheriffs’ annual receipts had for many years
past been generally in considerable excess of the sum--fixed under
the Norman kings on the basis of the Domesday Survey--for which they
were accountable to the royal treasury as ferm of the shire. Whatever
they received beyond this fixed sum seems to have been originally, in
theory at least, their own profit. But a share of it was naturally soon
claimed by the Crown; and this was done, not by putting the ferm at a
higher figure, but by charging the sheriff with an additional lump sum
under the title of _crementum_, or, in John’s time, _proficuum_.[936]
Whatever proportion the increment thus paid to the Crown may have
borne to the actual receipts of the sheriffs, it is clear that under
a sovereign of John’s character an arrangement which made king and
sheriff partners in gain would make them also partners in extortion.
The partnership began when the sheriff entered upon his office; he
was appointed to it by the king alone, he held it during the king’s
pleasure; John had no trouble in finding sheriffs after his own heart.
As the improvement of the royal demesnes and the legitimate proceeds
of royal jurisdiction were inadequate to produce increment on a scale
such as is shown in some of the Pipe Rolls of the reign, these men
fleeced the people of their shire by every means they could devise, for
the joint profit of the king and themselves; and the king connived at
and abetted every possible usurpation of the sheriffs, that they might
wring out of the shire a larger amount of money for him. They set at
nought the restrictions which John’s predecessors had placed upon their
action. They took upon themselves to keep the pleas of the Crown,
without reference to the coroners to whom that duty had been specially
intrusted under Richard.[937] They accused men of offences and sent
them to the ordeal without more ado, in defiance of Henry’s ordinance
limiting the employment of that mode of trial to cases in which the
charge was made on the presentment of a sworn jury.[938] The corrupt
and extortionate rule of the sheriffs had been strongly condemned by
the bishops and magnates in the king’s name at the council at S. Albans
in August 1213, and it is said that after the coming of the legate some
attempt was made to check these abuses by removing the most glaring
offenders from office;[939] but a mere change of officers was of little
avail; the fault lay not only in the persons who worked the system, but
also in the system itself; and the evil extended far beyond the sphere
of the sheriffs’ activity.
The whole judicial administration of the realm was corrupt. There was
very distinctly one law for the rich and another for the poor.[940]
Justice was sold, delayed, or refused altogether, at the king’s
will.[941] Proceedings for which the presence of only the parties
concerned in the suit, and a certain number of jurors, was legally
necessary, were made a pretext for summoning other persons,[942]
evidently for the sake of exacting fines from them if they failed to
attend, and were protracted[943] so as to make attendance as vexatious
as possible, that there might be the more defaulters and the more
fines. The course of justice was subjected to constant interference
through the summary evocation of causes from the lower courts to that
of the king, at the instance of any suitor who could afford to pay for
the writ of “_praecipe_” whereby the sheriff was authorized to effect
the transfer.[944] Fines were imposed without regard either to the
scale of the offence or the offender’s means of paying, so that men
of all classes were reduced by them to ruin, being unable to make up
the required sum except by selling their sole means of livelihood--the
free yeoman his tenement, the villein his cart, the merchant his stock
in trade;[945] clerks were amerced to the full value not only of any
lay tenement which they possessed, but also of their ecclesiastical
benefices.[946] Henry’s Assize had given to the Crown only the chattels
of a convicted felon; but now the Crown took his land also, without
compensation to the mesne lord to whom it ought to have reverted.[947]
The exactions and usurpations of the Crown were of the most various
kinds, and affected every class of society. Reliefs of arbitrary and
unreasonable amount were again, as in the Red King’s days, exacted
from tenants-in-chief on succession to their estates.[948] Sub-tenants
holding land which formed part of an escheated honour were made to pay
relief not as other sub-tenants paid to their immediate lord, but as if
they held in chief of the Crown.[949] The widows of tenants-in-chief
could not obtain the dowry to which they were legally entitled without
payment to the king for its assignment,[950] and were forced into
second marriages against their will.[951] The wardship and marriage
of minor heirs was given, or sold, by the king to his friends without
regard to the honesty or dishonesty of the guardian and the interests
of the minor and his family.[952] By an ingenious piece of intentional
confusion the Crown arrogated to itself the right of wardship in
cases where it had no such right. If a man held land of the Crown
by a non-feudal tenure, and also held other land under another lord
by knight-service, the distinction between his holding in chief and
his holding in chivalry was ignored for the king’s benefit, and the
custody of all the man’s lands was appropriated to the Crown.[953]
Distraints for debt to the Crown were made in the most arbitrary way;
the king’s bailiffs would, if it so pleased them or their master,
seize a debtor’s land instead of his chattels, though the value of
these latter sufficed to discharge his debt; or they would distrain
a debtor’s sureties, although he himself was able to pay.[954] When
a freeman died, they assumed as matter of course that he was in debt
to the king, and without inquiring to what amount, they seized his
chattels, to be restored to his executors or next-of-kin only when the
royal claim was satisfied, and not always then.[955] John, like William
Rufus, “would be every man’s heir.” If a man died in debt to the Jews,
and leaving an heir under age, those usurers were suffered to exact
interest upon their debt during the minority of the heir, so that if
through the death of the Jewish creditor the debt should fall into the
king’s hand (the Crown being the legal heir of all Jews), there should
be as much for the king as possible; and in such cases he claimed
payment of the uttermost farthing that was set down in the Jew’s
account-book, although he might thereby leave the Christian debtor’s
widow and children to starve.[956] Exorbitant tolls were exacted from
merchants.[957] Fines were laid upon towns for the making of bridges,
in places where no such obligation had existed in times past.[958]
Weirs were placed in the rivers that the king might keep to himself
the profits of fishing.[959] Monasteries not of royal foundation were
taken into the king’s custody during vacancy, in defiance of the rights
of their founders’ representatives.[960] The king’s bailiffs compelled
men to give their corn and other goods for the use of the king or his
servants, their horses and carts for the carriage of burdens in his
service, their wood for the construction of his buildings, whether the
owners were willing or not, and seemingly without payment.[961] Free
men were arrested, imprisoned, ejected from their lands, even exiled or
outlawed, without legal warrant or fair trial.[962] Individuals were
forbidden to enter or quit the realm at the mere will of the king.[963]
Some barons whom he specially favoured, or wanted to propitiate,
received licences to impose arbitrary taxes on their sub-tenants,
without regard to the limits of feudal custom,[964] just as the king
himself imposed taxes on his subjects according to his will and
pleasure. In a word, the entire system of government and administration
set up under the Norman kings and developed under Henry and Richard
had been converted by the ingenuity of John into a most subtle and
effective engine of royal extortion, oppression and tyranny over all
classes of the nation, from earl to villein.
The only class which was as yet capable of making any corporate
opposition or protest was the baronage; and hitherto the discontent
of the barons had shown itself only in the resistance of some of
their number to the king’s demands on certain special occasions and
in reference to certain special points which affected them personally
as tenants-in-chief. But there was now one man in England who looked
at the questions at issue between them and the king from a higher
standpoint than theirs, and in whose eyes those questions were only
small parts of a much wider and deeper question, on the solution of
which he had set his mind from the very hour of his landing in the
realm. One chronicler relates that John’s first impulse on hearing of
Archbishop Stephen’s arrival in England had been to withdraw himself
to some remote place and put off their meeting as long as possible,
and that he had only been induced to abandon this intention by the
remonstrances of some of the barons.[965] Whether this particular
story be true or not, it seems plain that John’s conduct throughout
his quarrel with the Church was to a great extent dictated by personal
dislike to the archbishop. This feeling must have been mainly
instinctive; for the two men had never seen each other till they met at
Winchester on July 20, 1213. The instinct, however, was a true one: it
was Stephen Langton who was to give the first impulse to the work which
was destined--though not till long after he had passed away--to make
the rule of such a king as John impossible in England for evermore.
The archbishop was determined to be satisfied with nothing short of
a literal fulfilment of the promise on which he had insisted as a
condition of the king’s absolution, the promise that to “_all_ men”
their rights should be restored. He saw that this end could be gained
only by the instrumentality of the barons; he also saw that it could
be gained only by a policy based on clearer and firmer, as well as
broader and nobler, lines than any of them were capable of designing.
They, indeed, had no definite scheme of policy; nor had they any leader
able to furnish them with such a scheme. The men of highest standing
among the magnates, such as the earls of Salisbury, Chester, Albemarle,
Warren, Cornwall and William the Marshal,--the men of highest standing
among the official class, such as the heads of the houses of Aubigny,
Vipont, De Lucy, Basset, Cantelupe, Neville, Brewer[966]--had either
gone to the war or paid their scutage for it without a murmur, and
stood utterly aloof from the group of “Northerners,” among whom the
most conspicuous were two barons of secondary rank, Eustace de Vesci
and Robert Fitz-Walter. Both Eustace and Robert are said to have had
just grounds for bitter personal resentment against John; but Robert
Fitz-Walter had twice already shown himself to be both a traitor and a
coward; and on the second occasion, in 1212, Eustace de Vesci had done
the like. The pardon and restoration of both these men in the following
year was a matter of policy, but was not due to any merits of their
own.[967] It was not under the inspiration and guidance of such men as
these that the liberties of the English people could be won, nor even
that the barons could succeed in their struggle for the privileges,
pretended or real, of their own order. Another guide offered himself
to them in the person of Stephen Langton, and offered to them at the
same time a definite basis of action in the charter of Henry I. Whether
the offer was made at the meeting in S. Paul’s in August 1213, or at
some later date and in some other way, is of little consequence; it
is enough that antecedent probability and after-history alike justify
the general belief of which Roger of Wendover is the spokesman:--that
it was Langton who brought to light the charter of which the very
existence seems to have been forgotten, and it was from him that the
barons adopted it as the basis of their demands.
The next step which they took in so doing was weightier than,
probably, they themselves had any idea of. At first glance the charter
seems to have little or no bearing upon the immediate subject of
dispute between them and the king; it contains no mention whatever of
either scutage or military service beyond sea. But it does contain a
series of clauses regulating the relations between the tenants-in-chief
and the Crown; and thus it furnished them with a substantial ground
for insisting that all violations of its provisions on the part of the
Crown must be redressed before any further burdens could be binding
upon them. It was even possible for them to argue that any demands on
the king’s part other than those expressly sanctioned in the charter
were an encroachment on their privileges as therein defined. For the
greater purpose which Langton had in view, the value of the charter lay
in its opening of the way to wider reforms by the incidental clauses
which bound the tenants-in-chief to extend to their sub-tenants the
same benefits which they themselves received from the king, and in
the comprehensive sentence which declared the abolition of “all evil
customs whereby the realm was unjustly oppressed.”[968] The more
thoughtful among the confederate barons may perhaps by this time have
begun to see that, even from a selfish point of view, they had nothing
to lose, and might have something to gain, by identifying their cause
with that of the nation as a whole. Many of the grievances which
touched the lower classes touched the higher also, though not always in
the same way. Moreover, although the people were as yet powerless to
initiate any corporate action in their own behalf, their support had
saved more than one earlier sovereign in a struggle against the barons;
it might prove no less useful to the barons in a struggle against the
king. But whatever the barons may have thought about these matters, the
king was statesman enough to see as clearly as the primate how weighty
and far-reaching might be the consequences involved in the demand for
a renewal of the charter. He therefore postponed its discussion till
after Christmas.[969]
[Sidenote: 1214]
Such is the brief statement of the Barnwell annalist. In its stead,
Roger of Wendover gives us a dramatic scene in S. Edmund’s abbey.
“The earls and barons of England,” he tells us, came together in
that sanctuary, “as if for prayer; but there was something else in
the matter, for after they had held much secret discourse, there was
brought forth in their midst the charter of King Henry I., which the
same barons had received in London, as hath been before said, from
Archbishop Stephen of Canterbury. Then they went all together to
the church of S. Edmund the King and Martyr, and beginning with the
eldest, they swore on the high altar that if the king sought to evade
their demand for the laws and liberties which that charter contained,
they would make war upon him and withdraw from fealty to him till he
should, by a charter furnished with his seal, confirm to them all that
they demanded. They also agreed that after Christmas they would go all
together to the king, and ask him for a confirmation of the aforesaid
liberties; and that meanwhile they would so provide themselves with
horses and arms that if the king should seek to break his oath, they
might by seizing his castles compel him to make satisfaction. And when
these things were done they returned every man to his own home.”[970]
[Sidenote: 1215]
John was at S. Edmund’s on November 4;[971] it is possible therefore
that his meeting with the barons may have been held there, and that
the scene described by Roger may have taken place after the king’s
departure. He kept Christmas at Worcester, and returned to London at
the opening of the new year.[972] There, at Epiphany, the confederate
barons came to him in a body, “in somewhat showy military array,” and
prayed him “that certain laws and liberties of King Edward, with
other liberties granted to them and to the English Church and realm,
might be confirmed, as they were written in the charter of King Henry
I. and the laws aforesaid; moreover they declared that at the time of
his absolution at Winchester, he had promised those ancient laws and
liberties, and thus he was bound by his own oath to the observance of
the same.” John cautiously answered that “the matter which they sought
was great and difficult, wherefore he asked for a delay till the close
of Easter, that he might consider how to satisfy both their demands and
the dignity of his crown.”[973] He then seems to have tried to persuade
them--no doubt each man singly--into giving him a written promise
“never again to demand such liberties from him or his successors”; but
to this no one would consent except the bishop of Winchester, the earl
of Chester, and William Brewer.[974] At last the proposed adjournment
till the close of Easter was agreed upon, but not till the king had,
“against his will,” pledged himself by three sureties to fulfill his
promise by giving reasonable satisfaction to all parties at the date
thus appointed.[975]
The king’s sureties were the archbishop of Canterbury, the bishop of
Ely, and William the Marshal. The choice of the archbishop as one of
them was good policy on John’s part; and Langton’s acceptance of the
office implies no wavering or double-dealing on his side. In so far
as it was his inspiration that gave a new force to the enterprise of
the barons, by raising it from a struggle for their own privileges
into a struggle for the liberties of the English nation, he was in
truth, as Roger of Wendover says, their “chief ally”;[976] and for the
achievement of its end as he himself conceived it, he did indeed “give
them his most faithful help to the utmost of his power.” But the help
which he gave them was not that of a partisan; Stephen Langton was at
once too true a churchman and too great a statesman, and held too lofty
a conception of his proper constitutional functions as primate of all
England, to identify himself with any party. The right and the duty of
the archbishop of Canterbury was to be the partisan of neither king nor
people, but the guide and monitor of both, so far as they would accept
his guidance and listen to his admonitions, and the mediator between
them whenever mediation was needed. He was by virtue of his office the
first adviser of the Crown as well as the guardian of the nation’s
rights; and it was only by standing firmly at his post by the king’s
side in the former capacity that he could be truly efficient in the
latter. Langton’s attitude was evidently understood by both parties at
the time. From the moment when the northern barons first asked the king
to confirm his great-grandfather’s charter, if not before, John must
have known that the hand of the primate was with them in the matter.
But he was quite as much alive as they were to the value of such a
helper; moreover, he seems to have had the somewhat rare gift of being
able to recognize in another man qualities which were conspicuously
absent from his own character. Much as he hated Langton, he evidently
trusted to his honour and loyalty as implicitly as he trusted to that
of William the Marshal. He therefore continued to the end the policy
which he had pursued ever since the archbishop’s coming to England.
He treated Langton with every mark of confidence and respect; he
carefully avoided any step which might have forced him into opposition
on ecclesiastical grounds; and in his diplomatic dealings with the
barons it was Langton whom he employed as his chief commissioner and
representative.
The king, however, was even more prompt than the barons in preparing
to back diplomacy by force. Immediately after the Epiphany meeting he
ordered a renewal of the oath of allegiance throughout the country; and
this time it was to be taken in the form of an oath of liege homage,
binding his subjects to “stand by him against all men.” This, it is
said, was an unwonted addition, which was generally opposed as being
“contrary to the charter”--the standard by which all things were now
tried.[977] It may have been in connexion with this matter that the
king sent {Feb. 10} to the men of sixteen southern and midland shires
commissioners “to explain his business” to them;[978] but he ended by
withdrawing his demand, “not deeming the time opportune for exciting a
tumult among the people.”[979] That tumults would nevertheless arise
before long he knew full well; and to meet this danger he had already
called to his aid the loyal “barons and bachelors” of Poitou.[980]
The summons must have been issued immediately after, if not even in
anticipation of, his meeting with the English malcontents at Epiphany,
and the response must have been as prompt as the summons, for on
February 8 he had already heard of the arrival in Ireland of some
troops sent to him by Savaric de Mauléon, and was issuing orders to the
archbishop of Dublin for the payment of their passage to England.[981]
On February 19 the king gave a safe-conduct to “the barons of the
North” that they might come to Oxford to speak with the primate, the
other bishops and the Earl Marshal on Sunday the 22nd.[982] Whether
this conference took place, or what came of it, we are not told; but
on March 13 John wrote to the barons and bachelors of Poitou that
the matter for which he had summoned them was now settled, and he
therefore, thanking them for their readiness to obey his call, bade
those of them who had not yet set out remain at home, and those who had
started go home again, with the assurance that he would indemnify them
for their expenses.[983]
It is possible that the barons may have asked for the conference at
Oxford in order to remonstrate against the warlike preparations of the
king, and that it may have resulted in some temporary arrangement which
compelled him to dismiss the Poitevins. It is also possible that this
dismissal may have been prompted by tidings from Rome. The prospect
of some such crisis as the present one had almost certainly been in
the minds of king and barons alike when John performed his homage to
the Pope; and both alike now sought to make their profit out of that
transaction, each side appealing to the Pope, as the common overlord
of both, to use his authority in compelling the other to yield. An
envoy from John, William Mauclerc, had reached Rome on February 17.
Eleven days later Eustace de Vesci and two other representatives of
the malcontent party arrived with letters for the Pope. In these
letters--so Mauclerc reported to his master--the confederate barons
besought Innocent, “since he was lord of England,” to urge and, if
needful, compel the king to restore the ancient liberties granted by
his predecessors and confirmed by his own oath. They recited how at the
meeting in London at Epiphany John had not only refused to grant these
liberties, but had endeavoured to make the petitioners promise never
to ask for them again. They begged that the Pope would take measures
to help them in this matter, “forasmuch as he well knew that they
had at his command boldly opposed the king in behalf of the Church’s
liberty, and that the king’s grant of an annual revenue and other
honours to the Pope and the Roman Church had been made not of free
will and devotion, but from fear and under compulsion from them.”[984]
Of what John wrote, or charged his envoy to say, to Innocent in his
behalf, no record remains; but Innocent’s letters show what the tenour
of John’s argument must have been. With his usual dexterity the king
made capital out of the secret meetings held, or said to have been
held, by the malcontents; and he also brought into special prominence
the one point of discussion which was quite clearly defined, and in
which he unmistakeably had precedent on his side--the question of the
scutage. On March 19 Innocent wrote to the archbishop of Canterbury and
the other English bishops, expressing his surprise that they had not
checked the quarrel between the king and “certain magnates and barons,”
and reproving them for their failure to do so; he strongly condemned
the “conspiracies and conjurations” which the barons were reported to
have made, and ordered the bishops to quash all such conspiracies and
urge the barons to proceed only by fair and lawful means. On the other
hand, he besought the king “to treat the aforesaid nobles graciously,
and mercifully to grant their just petitions.” On the same day he
wrote to the barons, informing them of the contents of his letter to
the bishops.[985] On April 1 he wrote to the barons again, avowedly in
consequence of the king’s complaint of their refusal to pay the scutage
for the Poitevin war; he reproved them for their contumacy in this
matter, and “warned and exhorted” them to satisfy the king’s claims
without further delay.[986]
[Sidenote: April 19–26]
By the middle of April the two former of these letters must have
reached England, the second being probably brought back by Eustace
de Vesci and his companions. The third letter was scarcely needed to
show the barons that their cause was lost at Rome. John, moreover, had
secured its ruin in that quarter by taking the Cross[987]--partly, no
doubt, as a protection against personal violence, but still more as a
means of enlisting the Pope’s strongest sympathies in his behalf, and
holding up his enemies to execration as hinderers of the crusade. They
grew desperate; they held another council among themselves, at which
they determined, without waiting for their promised interview with the
king, that they “would deal civilly with him no longer”;[988] and in
Easter week they assembled at Stamford in arms.
Five earls and forty barons are mentioned by name as present at the
muster, “with many others”; they all came with horses and arms, and
brought with them “a countless host,” estimated to comprise about
two thousand knights, besides other horsemen, sergeants-at-arms, and
foot soldiers.[989] “And because for the most part they came from the
north, they were all called Northerners.” From Stamford they marched to
Northampton, but without doing any act of violence.[990] John, who had
spent Easter in London,[991] sent the primate and some other bishops
and magnates to parley with them.[992] Several meetings appear to have
taken place. The deliberations evidently turned chiefly on the Pope’s
letters. No allusion is made by the chroniclers to the letter about
the scutage, which perhaps had not yet arrived; but, on the one hand,
Innocent’s condemnation of secret conspiracies could not be ignored;
and on the other, the barons urged his injunction to the king to
hearken to their “just petitions.”[993] At length John--secure in the
consciousness that he could refuse every petition on the plea that it
was not just--authorized his commissioners to demand of the barons, in
his name, a categorical statement of the laws and liberties which they
desired.
This message was delivered to the insurgents by the primate and the
Marshal, at Brackley, on Monday April 27--the day after that originally
fixed for the meeting of the barons and the king. “Then they [the
barons] presented to the envoys a certain schedule, which consisted for
the most part of ancient laws and customs of the realm, declaring that
if the king did not at once grant these things and confirm them with
his seal, they would compel him by force.”[994] This “schedule” was no
doubt a kind of first draft, prepared under the direction of Langton
himself in his conferences with the insurgents during the previous
week, of those “Articles of the Barons” from which we chiefly learn the
grievances of the time, and most of which were ultimately embodied in
the Great Charter. Langton and the Marshal carried it back to the king,
who was now in Wiltshire.[995] One by one the articles were read out
to him by the primate. John listened with a scornful smile: “Why do
these barons not ask for my kingdom at once?” he said. “Their demands
are idle dreams, without a shadow of reason.” Then he burst into a
fury, and swore that he would never grant to them liberties which
would make himself a slave. In vain the archbishop and the Marshal
endeavoured to persuade him to yield; he only bade them go back to the
barons and repeat every word that he had said. They performed their
errand;[996] and the barons immediately sent to the king a formal
renunciation of their homage and fealty,[997] and chose for themselves
a captain-general in the person of Robert Fitz-Walter, to whom they
gave the title of “Marshal of the army of God and Holy Church.”[998]
They then marched back to Northampton, occupied the town and laid siege
to the castle.[999]
The king was not behindhand in his preparations for war. His friends
were already mustering at Gloucester; on April 30 he requested them
to proceed thence on the following Monday (May 3), well furnished
with horses and arms, and with “all the men they could get,” to
Cirencester, there to await his further commands.[1000] Orders were
issued for strengthening the fortifications of London, Oxford, Norwich,
Bristol and Salisbury.[1001] The earls of Salisbury, Warren, Pembroke
and others perambulated the country to see that the royal castles
were properly fortified and manned;[1002] help was summoned from
Flanders[1003] and from Poitou.[1004] Early in May the king returned
for a couple of days to London;[1005] and as fourteen years before he
had won the support of its citizens in his struggle with Richard’s
chancellor by granting to them the “commune” which they desired, so now
he endeavoured to secure their adhesion by confirming their liberties
and adding to them the crowning privilege of a fully constituted
municipality, the right to elect their own mayor every year.[1006]
Meanwhile the “northern” barons had found Northampton castle too strong
to be taken without military engines which they did not possess; so
at the end of a fortnight they had raised the siege and moved on to
Bedford. Here the castle was given up to them by its commandant,
William de Beauchamp.[1007] Their forces were rapidly increasing in
number; the younger men especially, sons and nephews of the greater
barons, joined them readily, “wishing to make for themselves a name
in war”; the elder magnates, for the most part, clave to the king “as
their lord.”[1008]
On May 9 the king--now at Windsor--proposed that the quarrel should
be decided by eight arbitrators, four to be chosen by himself and
four by “the barons who are against us,” with the Pope as “superior”
over them; he offered the earl of Warren and four bishops as sureties
for his own acceptance of the award, and promised that until it was
delivered he would take no forcible measures against the insurgents,
“save according to the law of the realm and the judgement of their
peers in his court.”[1009] This proposal seems to have been rejected at
once, for two days later John ordered the sheriffs to seize the lands,
goods and chattels of “his enemies” in their several shires and apply
them to his benefit.[1010] Almost immediately afterwards he seems to
have commissioned the archbishop of Canterbury to negotiate a truce
for a few days. On the 16th he appointed his brother, Earl William of
Salisbury, to act as his representative in London.[1011] The object of
William’s mission evidently was to secure, if possible, the loyalty of
the “mayor, aldermen and other barons of London,” which John suspected
to be wavering. His suspicion was correct; a plot for the betrayal of
the city was already ripe, and on the very next morning--Sunday, May
17--the insurgents were masters of the capital.[1012] The first use
they made of this success was to fill their pockets with plunder taken
from the king’s partisans in the city, and from the Jews; the next was
to pull down the Jews’ houses and use the stones for repairing the city
walls. They then sent letters to all the earls, barons and knights who
still adhered to the king, “bidding them, if they cared to retain their
property and goods, forsake a king who was perjured and in rebellion
against his barons, and join with them in standing firmly and fighting
strongly for the peace and liberty of the realm; threatening that if
they neglected so to do, they, the writers, would direct their banners
and their arms against them as against public enemies, and do their
utmost to overthrow their castles, burn their dwellings, and destroy
their fishponds, orchards and parks.” These invitations and threats
brought over to the winning side all who had been waiting to see which
way the tide would turn, and they, of course, made a right goodly
company.[1013]
Still the king did not lose heart. He had gone from Berkshire into
Wiltshire,[1014] and was at his hunting seat of Fremantle--“a house
which stands on a height, and in the heart of a forest”--when, on May
18 or 19, a party of Flemish knights under Robert de Béthune found
their way to him and offered themselves for his service. He gave them
a joyous welcome, and hearing that a sudden rising had taken place in
Devon, despatched them under the command of the earl of Salisbury to
deal with it. The insurgents were reported to be besieging Exeter,
whence the earl was bidden to dislodge them; but they had, in fact,
already taken it; and when Earl William reached Sherborne, he was told
that they were lying hidden in a wood through which his road lay,
in such numbers that he and his followers had no chance of escape
if they fell into the ambush; whereupon he went back to the king at
Winchester.[1015] “You are not good at taking fortresses!” said John
scornfully when he heard the tale. A few days later he again bade the
same party go and drive the “Northerners” out of Exeter. Again they
were met at Sherborne by alarming accounts of the increased numbers
of the enemy; but this time the Flemings, stung by the king’s taunt,
insisted upon going forward to “conquer or die”; and the “Northerners,”
though they are said by the contemporary Flemish chronicler to have
been ten to one, evacuated Exeter at the mere tidings of their
approach.[1016]
This second expedition to Exeter probably started from Winchester on
the same day (May 24) on which John issued a notice that any persons
who came to his service from over sea were to place themselves under
the orders of his chamberlain, Hubert de Burgh.[1017] He had summoned
a part of his forces to muster on May 26 at Marlborough; but on the
25th they were bidden to proceed to “the parts of Odiham and Farnham,”
there to receive his commands; while others, who were to have come to
Reading, were to await his orders sent through Jordan de Sackville. On
the same day John wrote to the archbishop of Canterbury, urgently, but
very courteously, entreating that he would temporarily waive his right
to the custody of Rochester castle and allow the king to garrison it
with men of his own.[1018] To this request Langton acceded.[1019] By
this time he had negotiated another truce, and two days later {May 27}
John gave him a safe-conduct for himself and for whatever persons he
might bring with him to Staines “to treat of peace between ourself and
our barons.”[1020]
The object of all these changes of front on the king’s part was to gain
time for assembling new forces and devising a new policy. On the same
day on which he gave the safe-conduct to the archbishop, he despatched
an urgent appeal to all “his knights, men-at-arms, and friends who were
coming to join him” from over sea, entreating them to come as speedily
as possible, and promising that they should be well rewarded for so
doing.[1021] On May 29 he again wrote to the Pope, complaining of the
rebellious attitude of the barons, which made it impossible for him to
fulfil his vow of crusade.[1022] On Whitsun Eve, June 6, he bade his
favourite captain of mercenaries, Falkes de Bréauté, send four hundred
Welshmen to Salisbury to meet its earl by the following Tuesday,[1023]
seemingly to be ready for action on the Thursday, when the truce would
expire.
John knew, however, that the game was lost. Four bodies of insurgents
were now in the field, and none of them seem to have paid any regard
to the truce. The townsfolk of Northampton had risen against the royal
garrison of the castle and slain several of them. The force which
occupied London was besieging the Tower; and now, in this Whitsun week,
another body seized Lincoln.[1024] The king was almost deserted; at one
moment he is said to have had only seven knights left in his suite; the
sessions of the Exchequer and of the sheriffs’ courts throughout the
country had ceased, because no one would pay him anything or obey him
in any matter.[1025] He had come up on May 31 from Odiham to Windsor,
doubtless to meet the archbishop at Staines; on June 4 he went back
into Hampshire.[1026] On Whit-Monday, June 8, he issued from Merton a
safe-conduct for envoys from the barons to proceed to and from Staines
from Tuesday the 9th till Thursday the 11th. On Wednesday the 10th
he returned to Windsor, and the truce was prolonged from Thursday to
the following Monday, the 15th.[1027] Finally, he despatched William
the Marshal and some other trusty envoys to tell the barons in London
“that for the sake of peace and for the welfare and honour of his
realm, he would freely concede to them the laws and liberties which
they asked; and that they might appoint a place and day for him and
them to meet, for the settlement of all these things.” The messengers
“guilelessly performed the errand which had been guilefully imposed on
them”; and the barons, “buoyed up with immense joy,” fixed the meeting
to take place on June 15 in a meadow between Staines and Windsor,[1028]
called Runnimead.[1029]
[Sidenote: June 15]
There, on the appointed morning, the two parties pitched their tents at
a little distance from each other on the long reach of level grass-land
which stretched along the river-bank. The barons came “with a multitude
of most illustrious knights, all thoroughly well armed.”[1030] “It
is useless,” says another chronicler, “to enumerate those who were
present on the side of the barons, for they comprised well-nigh all
the nobility of England.” With the king were the archbishops of
Canterbury and Dublin, seven bishops, Pandulf--who had been sent back
to England as the Pope’s representative instead of Nicolas--the Master
of the English Templars, the earls of Pembroke, Salisbury, Warren and
Arundel, and about a dozen barons of lesser degree, including Hubert
de Burgh.[1031] It was to these chosen few, and above all to the
first of them, that John really capitulated. His declaration that he
granted the Great Charter by their counsel may well have been true of
them all; his most devoted adherents could, if they had any political
sagacity, advise him nothing else for his own interest. The terms of
capitulation, however, imply more than this. Nominally, the treaty--for
it was nothing less[1032]--was based upon a set of forty-nine articles
“which the barons demanded and the lord king granted.”[1033] But
those articles are obviously not the composition of “the barons”
mustered under Robert Fitz-Walter. Every step of the proceedings of
these insurgents up to that moment, every step of their proceedings
afterwards, as well as everything that is known of the character of
their leaders, goes to show that they were no more capable of rising
to the lofty conception embodied in the Charter--the conception of
a contract between king and people which should secure equal rights
to every class and every individual in the nation--than they were
capable of formulating it in the minute detail and the carefully chosen
phraseology of the Charter or even of the Articles. The true history
of the treaty of Runnimead is told in one brief sentence by Ralph of
Coggeshall: “By the intervention of the archbishop of Canterbury, with
several of his fellow-bishops and some barons, a sort of peace was
made.”[1034] In other words, the terms were drawn up by Stephen Langton
with the concurrence of the other bishops who were at hand, and of the
few lay barons, on either side, who were statesmen enough to look at
the crisis from a higher standpoint than that of personal interest;
they were adopted--for the moment--by the mass of the insurgents as
being a weapon, far more effective than any that they could have forged
for themselves, for bringing the struggle with the king (so at least
they hoped) to an easy and a speedy end; and they were accepted--also
for the moment--by John, as his readiest and surest way of escape from
a position of extreme difficulty and peril. Thus before nightfall the
Great Charter was sealed; and in return John received anew the homage
of the barons who had defied him.[1035]
It was, however, one thing to make the treaty, and quite another to
carry it into effect. The framers of the Articles and of the Charter
had done what they could towards that end by a carefully planned “form
of security for the observance of the peace and liberties between the
king and the kingdom.”[1036] Out of the whole baronage of England the
barons present at Runnimead were to choose twenty-five, who should
“observe, keep, and cause to be observed, with all their might,” the
provisions of the Charter. If the king failed to do his part, these
twenty-five were to compel him thereto by force if necessary. For this
purpose they were authorized to claim assistance from “the community
of the whole country,” and they were therefore to receive an oath of
obedience from every man in the realm.[1037] King and barons alike
swore that they would keep all the provisions of the Charter “in good
faith and without deceit.”[1038] The king was made to promise that
he would not procure “from any one” anything whereby his concessions
might be revoked or diminished, and that if such revocation should be
obtained it should be accounted void and never used.[1039] That John’s
promises were worthless every one knew; it was not likely that all the
pressure which could be brought to bear upon him by “five-and-twenty
over-kings”--as his foreign mercenaries sarcastically called the
elected barons[1040]--would more than suffice, if even it should
suffice, to compel him to keep his word. Still the check thus set over
him was a very strong one. It was in fact the strongest that could be
devised; and it was made of indisputable authority by its incorporation
in the Charter.[1041]
On the other hand, the Charter contained no provision for compelling
the barons in general to fulfil their part of its obligations, either
towards their sub-tenants[1042] or towards the Crown, except what
might be implied in the authority given to the twenty-five; while for
securing the loyalty and good faith of the twenty-five themselves it
contained no provision at all. If we look at the text of the Charter
alone, we can but endorse the verdict of its foreign soldier-critics:
England was exchanging one king for five-and-twenty. This defect in
the treaty seems to have been noticed as soon as it was passed, and
a remedy was sought in the appointment of another body of barons,
thirty-eight in number, chosen from both parties,[1043] and including
the Earl Marshal and the other chief adherents of the king; these,
after swearing obedience to the twenty-five, took another oath which
bound them to compel both the king and the twenty-five to deal
justly with one another.[1044] This precaution may perhaps have been
suggested by Langton and the other bishops when a significant incident
had shown them that the promise of the insurgent barons was worth no
more than that of the king. This incident rests upon the authority
of a joint statement purporting to be issued, evidently by way of
protest and warning and for the clearing of their own consciences, by
ten eye-witnesses--the archbishops of Canterbury and Dublin, seven
English bishops, and Pandulf. In a letter-patent addressed to “all
Christian people,” these ten persons (if the document be genuine)
recite how in their sight and hearing the barons had made to the
king--seemingly before the Charter was sealed--a verbal promise that
they would give him, for their observance of the agreement between him
and themselves, any security which he might choose, except castles or
hostages. “Afterwards” John called upon them to fulfil this promise by
giving him in their turn a charter, whereby they should acknowledge
themselves bound to him by oath and homage as his liegemen, and for the
preservation of his rights and those of his heirs and the defence of
his realm. “But,” say the witnesses, “this they would not do.”[1045]
Such, it seems, was the earnest of the loyalty to their plighted word
which England, as well as John, had to expect from the men who posed as
the champions of justice and right.
For ten days the nominally reconciled enemies sat watching each other,
the king at Windsor, the barons still encamped in the surrounding
meadows. In private, John’s feelings broke out in wild paroxysms of
fury characteristic of his race; he “gnashed his teeth, rolled his
eyes, caught up sticks and straws and gnawed them like a madman, or
tore them into shreds with his fingers.”[1046] But to the outside
world he wore a calm and smiling face, chatting familiarly and gaily
with every one whom he met, and declaring himself perfectly satisfied
with the settlement of affairs.[1047] Within the next seven days {June
19–22} he despatched copies of the Charter to the sheriffs, foresters
and other royal bailiffs in every shire, with letters patent ordering
them to make the men under their jurisdiction swear obedience to the
twenty-five barons in whatever form these latter might prescribe, and
cause twelve sworn knights to be elected in the next county court
for the purpose of inquiring into evil customs with a view to their
extirpation as promised in the Charter.[1048] He also sent to his
mercenary captains {June 18} orders to desist from hostilities and
amend any damage which they might have done to the barons since the
peace was made.[1049] On the following Tuesday, June 23, he ordered
the foreign soldiers at Dover to be sent home at once.[1050] On the
25th a number of sheriffs were removed from office and replaced by
new ones.[1051] Before that date the king had appointed a new chief
justiciar, Hubert de Burgh,[1052] a faithful adherent of his own, who
was also an honourable man, respected by all parties, and a member of
the committee of thirty-eight. On the 27th the sheriffs and the knights
elected in every shire to inquire into evil customs were ordered to
punish summarily all persons who refused the oath of obedience to the
twenty-five.[1053]
The king was then at Winchester; he had left Windsor on the night of
the 25th.[1054] Illness--seemingly a severe attack of gout--had made
him unable to move sooner, and the barons had taken advantage of his
physical helplessness to heap upon him every insult in their power.
One day the twenty-five required his presence to confirm a judgement
in the Curia Regis; he was in bed, unable to set a foot to the ground,
so he sent them word that they must come and deliver the judgement
in his chamber, as he could not go to them. They “answered that they
would not go, for it would be against their right; but if he could not
walk, he must cause himself to be carried.” He did so, and when he was
brought into their presence “they did not rise to meet him, for it was
their saying that if they had risen, they should have done contrary to
their right.”[1055] This scene probably occurred in connexion with one
of the cases dealt with in the fifty-second article of the Charter,
the cases of persons who were, or asserted that they were, deprived
of their lands, castles, privileges or rights by an arbitrary act of
John or of his predecessors, without judgement of their peers. Some of
these cases, in which there was no doubt about the circumstances of
the deprivation, were settled without delay, and immediate restitution
was made to the claimants by the Crown.[1056] But there were others
which required investigation. Such was the claim of the earl of Essex
to the custody of the Tower of London.[1057] The chief justiciar of
England had been recognized as entitled by virtue of his office to the
custody of the Tower ever since the accession of Henry II.; but Henry’s
mother, the Empress Maud, had granted it by charter to Geoffrey de
Mandeville and his heirs;[1058] and it was now claimed as an hereditary
right by the earl of Essex, as eldest son of the late justiciar
Geoffrey Fitz-Peter by his marriage with Beatrice de Say, on whom the
representation of the Mandeville family had devolved.[1059] This matter
was too delicate and too important to be decided in haste; pending its
decision, the Tower was temporarily placed in neutral hands, the hands
of the archbishop of Canterbury,[1060] to whom Rochester castle was at
the same time restored.[1061] Finally, John proposed that the other
questions in dispute between himself and individual barons should all
be determined at Westminster on July 16. This being agreed, the barons
withdrew to London[1062] and the king to Winchester, whence at the
beginning of July he proceeded into Wiltshire.[1063]
King and barons alike knew that the “peace” had been made only to
be broken. The barons were the first to break it. Some of those
“Northerners” from beyond the Humber by whom the strife had been
originally begun had actually left Runnimead in the middle of the
conference, and were now openly preparing for war, on the pretext that
they “had not been present” at the settlement.[1064] Their southern
allies were really doing the same; only they veiled their preparations
under the guise of a tournament to be held, ostensibly in celebration
of the peace, at Stamford on July 6. Robert Fitz-Walter and his
companions, however, quickly discovered that if they wished to keep
their hold upon London they must not venture far away from the city;
they therefore postponed the tournament for a week, and transferred it
from Stamford to Staines. The victor’s prize was to be “a bear, which
a lady was going to send.”[1065] Meanwhile the new sheriffs--appointed
since the peace, and specially charged to enforce its provisions--were
meeting with a very rough reception in every shire where the “Northern”
influence predominated. All over the country the barons were fortifying
their castles; some were even building new ones.[1066] A more
scrupulous king than John might well have deemed himself justified,
under such circumstances, in doing what John did--following their
example in preparing to fling the treaty to the winds and renew the war.
The meeting which had been appointed for July 15 was postponed till
the 16th, and the place for it changed from Westminster to Oxford. On
the 15th the king came up from Clarendon into Berkshire, and on his
way from Newbury to Abingdon despatched a letter to the barons stating
that he “could not” meet them in person at Oxford on the morrow, but
that the archbishop of Dublin, the bishop of Winchester, Pandulf, the
earls Marshal, Warren, and Arundel, and the justiciar, would be there
in his stead, “to do to you what we ought to do to you, and to receive
from you what you ought to do to us.”[1067] The archbishop of Dublin
was no longer justiciar in Ireland; Geoffrey Marsh had been, on July 6,
appointed to succeed him in that office.[1068] On the same day Walter
de Lacy had been reinstated in all his Irish lands.[1069] Throughout
the summer of this year John, busy as he was with English affairs,
had found time to pay even more attention than usual to those of his
Irish dominion. From May to July the Close and Charter Rolls are full
of letters and writs relating to the Irish March; charters to towns,
to religious houses, to individual barons, orders concerning military
arrangements and other matters of local administration,[1070] all show
such constant intervention and such personal interest on the king’s
part as to convey an impression that he was specially endeavouring to
win for himself the support of the nobles, clergy and people of the
Irish March as a counterpoise to the hostility and disaffection which
surrounded him in his English realm. It was, however, to the Continent
that he mainly looked for aid. “After much reflection,” says Roger of
Wendover, “he chose, like the Apostle Peter, to seek vengeance upon
his enemies by means of two swords, that is, by a spiritual sword and
a material one, so that if he could not triumph by the one, he might
safely count upon doing so by the other.”[1071]
The spiritual weapon was the first to be actually drawn; but even
before its first stroke fell, swords of the other kind were making
ready for the king’s service. Emissaries from him were soon busy
in “all the neighbouring lands beyond the sea,” gathering troops
by promises of rich pay and ample endowments in English land, to
be confirmed by charters if the recipients desired it.[1072] The
chancellor, Richard Marsh, was thus raising troops in Aquitaine
{August};[1073] Hugh de Boves was doing the like in Flanders. Those
whom they enlisted were to be ready to come to the king at Dover by
Michaelmas Day.[1074] John was also seeking allies in France. On
August 12 he wrote to Count Peter of Britanny, offering him a grant
of the honour of Richmond if he would come “with all speed, and
with all the knights he could bring,” ready for service against the
insurgents in England.[1075] He is even said to have tried hard, “by
enormous promises,” to gain help from Philip Augustus; but in this
quarter “others had been beforehand with him,” says the chronicler
significantly.[1076] It was not without a cause that the barons at
Runnimead had refused to write themselves John’s liegemen.
Within the realm, the royal castles were being revictualled and made
ready to stand a siege at any moment.[1077] As yet no further attempt
had been made upon any of them; but in the north the barons, or their
followers and partizans, had begun to lay waste the royal manors and
overrun the forests, cutting down and selling the timber, and killing
the deer. Again the archbishop and bishops came forward as peacemakers,
and it was arranged that the king should meet them on August 16 at
Oxford, while the barons should assemble at Brackley, there to await
the result of the churchmen’s mediation. When the day arrived, however,
the king was still in Wiltshire, and excused his absence on the ground
that he had been so ill-treated since the conclusion of the peace,
and moreover at the last conference the barons had come together in
such menacing array, that he deemed it neither safe nor prudent to
risk himself in their midst; an excuse which was practically justified
by the action of the barons themselves, who, instead of waiting at
Brackley as they had agreed to do, came “with a numerous following” to
meet the bishops at Oxford.[1078]
The bishops had now received from Rome a communication which made their
position, or at least that of the Primate, an exceedingly anxious
and painful one. In consequence, it seems, of John’s letter of May
29 Innocent had issued a commission to the bishop of Winchester, the
abbot of Reading and Pandulf, whereby he declared excommunicate all
“disturbers of the king and kingdom of England, with their accomplices
and abettors,” laid their lands under interdict, and ordered the
archbishop and his episcopal brethren, on pain of suspension from
their office, to cause this excommunication to be published throughout
the realm every Sunday and holiday till the offenders should have
made satisfaction to the king and returned to their obedience.[1079]
Ill-fitted as the barons had proved to be for the great work in which
Langton had sought to enlist them, the cause of England’s freedom was
yet too closely bound up with theirs for him to be willing to launch at
them such a sentence as this, and he had sympathized too keenly with
his country’s misery under a former interdict not to recoil from the
prospect of another. The barons, on the other hand, had been heedless
of interdict and excommunication so long as their material interests
coincided with those of the king against the Church; but the matter
would wear a different aspect in their eyes now that the situation
was reversed and their one hope was in the aid of the Church against
the king. The Pope’s mandate was shown to them and the bishops in
conference at Oxford; after three days’ deliberation {Aug. 16–18} the
bishops agreed to delay the publication of the sentence till they had
seen the king again and made one more effort to bring him to a colloquy
in London or at Staines. It was rumoured that he had gone to the coast
with the intention of quitting England altogether; and the bishops are
said to have followed him to Portsmouth, and there found that he was
actually on shipboard. He came ashore again {Aug. 23–24?}, however, to
speak with them; but he absolutely refused to hold any more personal
conferences with the barons. The bishops returned to meet the barons
at Staines on August 26, accompanied by envoys from the king, who were
charged with a protest, to be delivered in his name in the hearing
of the whole assembly, that “it was not his fault if the peace was
not carried out according to the agreement.” After long deliberation
the papal sentence was proclaimed, but with a tacit understanding
that it was to be, for the present at least, a dead letter, on the
ground that as no names were mentioned in it, the phrase “disturbers
of the king and kingdom” need not be applied to any person or group
of persons in particular, but might be interpreted by every man as he
pleased. The more violent partizans immediately applied it to the king
himself, since in their eyes he was the chief troubler of the land, and
therefore also his own worst enemy.[1080]
After placing his queen and his eldest son in safety in Corfe
castle,[1081] John had taken ship, seemingly about August 24, at
Southampton or Portsmouth, and sailed round the coast to Sandwich,
where he appears to have landed on the 28th.[1082] The barons in
London, if we may believe the report of the chroniclers, were foolish
enough to imagine that he would never land again at all.[1083] They
were now taking upon themselves, in all those counties where their
power was strong enough, to supersede both the sheriffs and the
justices and usurp their functions, parcelling out the country among
members of their own body, each of whom was to act as the chief
judicial and administrative authority in the district committed to
him.[1084] In their premature triumph they were even beginning to
talk of choosing a new sovereign, and of calling the whole baronage of
England to a council for that purpose, “since this ought to be done
by the common consent of the whole realm.”[1085] Early in September,
however, the revolutionists awoke from their dreams to find that the
king was safe in Dover castle, surrounded by a little band of foreign
soldiers who had already joined him there, and awaiting the coming of
the host which was gathering for him beyond the sea.[1086] The three
executors of the papal mandate were meanwhile insisting that now, at
any rate, the barons had unquestionably fallen under its terms, by
endeavouring to expel the king from his realm; and they excommunicated
by name several of the revolutionary leaders, together with the
citizens of London, whom they placed under interdict. These sentences,
however, were disregarded, on the plea that they were barred by a
previous appeal to the general council[1087] which was to be held at
Rome on All Saints’ Day, and which most of the English bishops were
preparing to attend. Archbishop Stephen was about to set forth, in the
middle of September, when two of the papal commissioners--Pandulf and
Bishop Peter of Winchester--went to him in person and insisted that
he should enforce the publication of the Pope’s sentence throughout
his own diocese on all the appointed days, and order his suffragans to
do the same. Stephen answered that he would take no further steps in
the matter till he had spoken of it with the Pope himself, since he
believed the sentence to be grounded on a misunderstanding of the facts
of the case. On this Pandulf and Peter denounced him as disobedient to
the Pope’s mandate, and, in accordance with its terms, suspended him
from his office.[1088]
Stephen accepted his suspension without protest. He was indeed so
grievously disappointed at the turn which affairs in England had
taken, and so hopeless of doing any further good there, that he had
almost determined not only to resign his see, but to retire altogether
from the world and bury himself in a hermitage or a Carthusian
cell.[1089] Several of the bishops visited the king before they
went over sea;[1090] we are not told whether Stephen did so; but he
certainly had the king’s permission for his journey to Rome, for on
September 10 John by letters patent took under his protection all the
archbishop’s men, goods, lands and other possessions, and forbade his
own men to do them any injury.[1091] On the 13th the king wrote again
to the Pope, asking for his counsel and aid, and complaining that
“whereas before we subjected our land to you as overlord, our barons
were obedient to us, now they have risen up violently against us,
specially on account, as they publicly declare, of that very thing.”
This letter was carried by the archbishops of Bordeaux and Dublin and
seven other envoys.[1092] Pandulf--now bishop-elect of Norwich--seems
to have gone to Rome about the same time, charged with another letter
to the Pope.[1093] But before any of these travellers had set out on
their way the Pope had drawn his sword again; and this time the sword
was a two-handed one. It was the sword of the temporal overlord of
England, as well as of the spiritual head of Christendom.
The sixty-first article of the Charter enacted, as we have seen, that
if the king should procure “from any one” a revocation or cassation
of that document, such revocation should be accounted void. The only
person, however, from whom such a thing could possibly be sought was of
course the Pope; and in so far as the Pope was concerned, the clause
was itself in feudal law null and void from the beginning, owing to
the action of the barons before the Charter was drawn up or thought
of. Whatever may have been their real share in the surrender of the
kingdom to the Pope in May 1213, they had at any rate in February
1215, if we may believe William Mauclerc (and there is no reason
for disbelieving him), put on record their full concurrence in that
transaction after it was accomplished, and even taken voluntarily
upon themselves the whole responsibility both for its accomplishment
and for its initiation.[1094] Thereby they had deprived themselves of
whatever legal pretexts they might otherwise have had for repudiating
its consequences; and foremost of those consequences was the fact that
the Pope was now legally the supreme arbiter of political affairs in
England, by a right which had been given to him by the joint action
of the king and the barons, and against which no later reservation
made between those two parties themselves (such as the sixty-first
article of the Charter) was of any force in feudal law. The framers of
the Charter seem to have been conscious of this;[1095] John, indeed,
had pointedly reminded them of it before he consented to the Charter,
telling the barons, in answer to their demands, that nothing in the
government and constitution of England ought to be, or lawfully could
be, altered without the knowledge and sanction of the Pope, now that he
was overlord of the realm; and he had publicly appealed to the Pope,
as overlord, against them and all their doings. As soon as the Charter
was sealed, he had despatched envoys to Rome to prosecute his appeal,
and to lay before Innocent a statement of his case, together with such
extracts from the Charter as were most likely to influence the Pope in
his favour. The result was that on August 24--two days before the papal
denunciation of the “disturbers of the realm” was published by the
English bishops at Staines--Innocent as temporal overlord of England
quashed the Charter, and as Pope forbade its observance by either king
or people, on pain of excommunication.[1096]
FOOTNOTES:
[926] _Rot. Claus._ vol. i. p. 166 b.
[927] W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 217.
[928] W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 217.
[929] _Ib._ p. 218.
[930] “Ut fama refert,” R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 263.
[931] R. Wendover, vol. iii. pp. 263–6.
[932] _Ann. Waverl._ a. 1214; “potestate sua non bene utens, iram
baronum converti fecerat contra regem.”
[933] R. Coggeshall, p. 170.
[934] Articles of the Barons, 1215 cc. 39, 47.
[935] _Ib._ c. 8.
[936] Of the value to which these profits had risen some idea may be
gathered from the fact that a _proficuum_ of £336: 18: 8 was accounted
for as due to the Treasury in 1205 by the sheriff of Staffordshire and
Shropshire, of which two counties the united ferm was £413: 12: 4,
_Salt Archaeol. Soc. Publications_, vol. ii. pp. 129, 133. It must,
however, be added that this _proficuum_ was reduced next year to £266:
13: 4, and went down further year by year, till in 1212 it was only
about £155: 11s., _ib._ pp. 136, 138, 142, 145, 147, 151, 159. After
that year the Pipe Rolls are in confusion till 1218.
[937] Art. Bar. c. 14.
[938] _Ib._ c. 28.
[939] W. Coventry, vol. ii. pp. 214, 215.
[940] Art. Bar. c. 26.
[941] _Ib._ c. 30.
[942] _Ib._ c. 8.
[943] _Ib._ c. 13.
[944] _Ib._ c. 24.
[945] Art. Bar. c. 9.
[946] _Ib._ c. 10.
[947] _Ib._ c. 22.
[948] _Ib._ c. 1.
[949] _Ib._ c. 36.
[950] _Ib._ c. 4.
[951] _Ib._ c. 17.
[952] _Ib._ c. 3.
[953] _Ib._ c. 27.
[954] _Ib._ c. 5.
[955] Art. Bar. c. 15.
[956] _Ib._ cc. 34, 35.
[957] _Ib._ c. 31.
[958] _Ib._ c. 11.
[959] _Ib._ c. 23.
[960] _Ib._ c. 43.
[961] _Ib._ cc. 18, 20.
[962] _Ib._ c. 29.
[963] _Ib._ c. 33.
[964] _Ib._ c. 6.
[965] _Ann. Waverl._ a. 1213.
[966] R. Wendover, vol. iii. pp. 300, 301.
[967] See Note II. at end.
[968] Charter of Henry I. cc. 2, 4, 1.
[969] W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 218.
[970] R. Wendover, vol. iii. pp. 293, 294. Cf. R. Coggeshall, p. 170.
[971] _Itin._ a. 16.
[972] He was at Worcester December 25–27; Tewkesbury, 27, 28;
Geddington, December 31, 1214; and at the New Temple in London January
7–15, 1215. _Itin._ a. 16.
[973] R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 296. Cf. W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 218.
[974] _Foedera_, vol. i. pt. i. p. 120.
[975] R. Wendover, _l.c._
[976] “Isti omnes conjurati Stephanum Cantuariensem archiepiscopum
capitalem consentaneum habuerunt,” _ib._ p. 298.
[977] W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 218. It need scarcely be remarked that
the charter contains not a word on the subject. The argument evidently
was “whatever is not in the charter is contrary to it”; in other words,
“omission is prohibition.” The fact that such an argument might be used
on both sides was of course conveniently ignored.
[978] _Rot. Pat._ vol. i. p. 128.
[979] W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 218.
[980] _Rot. Pat._ p. 130.
[981] _Rot. Claus._ vol. i. p. 187 b.
[982] _Rot. Pat._ p. 129.
[983] _Ib._ p. 130.
[984] _Foedera_, vol. i. pt. i. p. 120. See above, p. 182.
[985] _Foedera_, vol. i. pt. i. p. 127.
[986] _Ib._ p. 128.
[987] On February 2, according to R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 296; on Ash
Wednesday (March 4), according to W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 219, and
_Ann. Winton._ a. 1215. This latter is the likelier date; if the fact
had been known at Rome before the Pope’s letters were written, they
would almost certainly have contained some reference to it.
[988] W. Coventry, _l.c._
[989] R. Wendover, vol. iii. pp. 297, 298; M. Paris, _Chron. Maj._
vol. ii. p. 585. W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 219, adds a bishop, Giles of
Hereford. Giles, however, was there not as bishop, but as the avenger
of his father, mother and brother--William, Maud, and the younger
William de Braose.
[990] W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 219.
[991] _Itin._ a. 16.
[992] W. Coventry, _l.c._
[993] _Ib._
[994] R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 298.
[995] Roger of Wendover, Walter of Coventry, and several other
annalists absurdly say that in Easter week (April 19–26) John was at,
or near, Oxford, where he was to have met the barons. John had not been
at Oxford since the Tuesday before Easter, April 13; from the 16th to
the 23rd he was in London; on the 23rd he went to Kingston, Reading
and Alton, and thence on the 26th to Clarendon; _Itin._ a. 16. On the
day he left London he granted a general safe-conduct to all persons
who should come to him in the suite of or with letters patent from the
archbishop (_Rot. Pat._ p. 134); none of the barons, however, seem to
have availed themselves of this offer.
[996] R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 299.
[997] W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 219.
[998] R. Wendover, _l.c._
[999] Cf. R. Wendover, _l.c._, and R. Coggeshall, p. 171.
[1000] _Rot. Pat._ p. 134 b.
[1001] _Rot. Claus._ vol. i. p. 198, 198 b: _Rot. Pat._ p. 135.
[1002] _Rot. Pat._ p. 135, 135 b.
[1003] On May 8 John announces that some horse and foot are coming over
under Gerard of Gravelines; _Rot. Pat._ p. 141.
[1004] _Ib._ p. 135(May 11).
[1005] May 7–9; _Itin._ a. 16.
[1006] _Rot. Chart._ p. 207.
[1007] R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 299.
[1008] W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 220.
[1009] _Rot. Pat._ p. 141.
[1010] _Rot Chart._ p. 209; _Rot. Claus._ vol. i. p. 204.
[1011] _Rot. Pat._ p. 136 b.
[1012] R. Wendover, vol. iii. pp. 299, 300; W. Coventry, vol. ii. p.
220; R. Coggeshall, p. 171; for date see _Rot. Pat._ vol. i. p. 137 b.
[1013] R. Wendover, vol. iii. pp. 300, 301.
[1014] _Itin._ a. 16, May 10–17.
[1015] _Hist. des Ducs_, pp. 147, 148. John was at Fremantle May 17–19;
thence he went to Silchester, May 19; Winchester, 19, 20; Odiham, 21,
22; Windsor, 22, 23; Winchester again, 23; _Itin._ a. 16.
[1016] _Hist. des Ducs_, pp. 148, 149.
[1017] _Rot. Pat._ p. 138.
[1018] _Ib._ p. 138 b.
[1019] Rochester castle was restored to the archbishop after the
“peace” in June. R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 319.
[1020] _Rot. Pat._ p. 142.
[1021] _Rot. Pat._ p. 141 b.
[1022] _Foedera_, vol. i. pt. i. p. 129.
[1023] _Rot. Claus._ vol. i. p. 214.
[1024] W. Coventry, vol. ii. pp. 220, 221. Cf. R. Coggeshall, p. 171.
[1025] R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 301.
[1026] _Itin._ a. 17. The authentic details of John’s movements at this
time are of some importance in view of Ralph of Coggeshall’s assertion
(p. 172) that he was just then so overcome with terror “ut jam extra
Windleshoram nusquam progredi auderet.”
[1027] _Rot. Pat._ pp. 142 b, 143.
[1028] R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 301.
[1029] “In prato qui vocatur Runemad,” R. Coggeshall, p. 172.
[1030] _Ib._
[1031] R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 302.
[1032] Stubbs, _Const. Hist._ vol. i. p. 530.
[1033] Heading of Articles of the Barons: “Ista sunt capitula quae
Barones petunt et Dominus Rex concedit.”
[1034] R. Coggeshall, p. 172. Cf. Gerv. Cant. vol. ii. p. 96.
[1035] _Rot. Pat._ p. 143. The “die Veneris” which occurs three times
in this writ is in each case an unquestionable, though unaccountable,
error for “die Lunae.”
[1036] Art. Bar. c. 49.
[1037] Art. Bar. c. 49; Magna Charta, c. 61.
[1038] M. Charta, c. 63.
[1039] _Ib._ c. 61.
[1040] M. Paris, _Chron. Maj._ vol. ii. p. 611, “Ecce vigesimus
quintus” [it should have been “sextus”] “rex in Anglia; ecce jam non
rex, nec etiam regulus, sed regum opprobrium,” etc.
[1041] M. Charta, c. 61.
[1042] _Ib._ cc. 15, 16, 60.
[1043] The twenty-five were of course all “Northerners” in the
political sense; see the list in M. Paris, _Chron. Maj._ vol. ii. p.
604.
[1044] The list of these thirty-eight is headed “Obsecutores et
Observatores,” and ends thus: “Isti omnes juraverunt quod obsequerentur
mandato viginti quinque baronum.” Another MS. adds: “Omnes isti
juraverunt cogere si opus esset ipsos XXV barones ut rectificarent
regem. Et etiam cogere ipsum si mutato animo forte recalcitraret,”
M. Paris, _Chron. Maj._ vol. ii. pp. 605, 606. Considering the
whole context, I think there can be little doubt that “rectificare
regem”--though an odd way of expressing it--really means here “to do
right to the king.”
[1045] _Rot. Pat._ p. 181.
[1046] M. Paris, _Chron. Maj._ vol. ii. p. 611.
[1047] M. Paris, _Hist. Angl._ vol. ii. p. 159.
[1048] _Rot. Pat._ p. 180 b.
[1049] _Ib._ p. 143 b.
[1050] _Ib._ p. 144.
[1051] _Ib._ pp. 144 b, 145.
[1052] _Ib._ p. 144 b.
[1053] _Ib._ p. 145 b.
[1054] _Itin._ a. 17.
[1055] _Hist. des Ducs_, p. 151.
[1056] W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 221; _Rot. Claus._ vol. i. pp. 215–18.
[1057] W. Coventry, _l.c._
[1058] Round, _Geoffrey de Mandeville_, pp. 89, 166.
[1059] W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 225, sums up the earl’s position and
character very suggestively: “In parte adversa erat Gaufridus de
Maundevilla comes Essexae, quem rex cingulo militari donaverat, quique
regi in XIX millibus marcarum obligatus erat pro comitissa Gloucestriae
quondam uxore sua, quam iste nuper acceperat.” See above, p. 196.
Geoffrey’s first wife had been a daughter of Robert Fitz-Walter; see
Note I at end.
[1060] W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 221; _Ann. Dunst._ a. 1215. Cf. R.
Wendover, vol. iii. p. 319.
[1061] R. Wendover, _l.c._
[1062] _Ib._; R. Coggeshall, p. 172.
[1063] _Itin._ a. 17.
[1064] W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 222.
[1065] R. Wendover, vol. iii. pp. 321, 322.
[1066] W. Coventry, _l.c._
[1067] _Rot. Pat._ p. 149.
[1068] _Ib._ p. 148.
[1069] _Ib._ p. 148 b.
[1070] _Rot. Claus._ vol. i. pp. 218, 218 b, 219, 219 b; _Rot. Chart._
pp. 210–13.
[1071] R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 319.
[1072] R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 320; where, however, the list of
emissaries is obviously incorrect.
[1073] _Rot. Pat._ p. 153, 153 b.
[1074] R. Wendover, _l.c._
[1075] _Rot. Pat._ vol. i. p. 152 b.
[1076] W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 222.
[1077] R. Wendover, _l.c._
[1078] W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 222.
[1079] R. Wendover, vol. iii. pp. 336–8; misplaced, as may be seen by
comparing W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 223.
[1080] W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 224. Cf. R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 341.
[1081] _Hist. des Ducs_, p. 152.
[1082] John’s Itinerary, a. 17, is blank from August 22, when he was
at Wareham, to August 28, when he appears at Sandwich. The _Hist. des
Ducs_, p. 153, accounts for this blank by stating that he went by
sea from Southampton to Dover (whither he did proceed on August 31
or September 1; _Itin._ _l.c._). W. Coventry (vol. ii. p. 224) says
the bishops who left Oxford on August 19 to seek him found him just
embarked at Portsmouth, which comes to the same thing.
[1083] The absurdity of the reports given in R. Wendover (vol. iii.
pp. 320, 321) and M. Paris (_Hist. Angl._ vol. ii. pp. 160, 161) about
John’s movements at this time was pointed out long ago by Dr. Lingard,
_Hist. England_, vol. ii. p. 362.
[1084] Earl Geoffrey de Mandeville took Essex; Robert Fitz-Walter,
Northamptonshire; Roger de Cresci, Norfolk and Suffolk; the earl of
Winchester, Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire; William of Aubigny,
Lincolnshire; John de Lacy, Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire; Robert de
Ros, Northumberland. W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 224.
[1085] _Ib._
[1086] _Ib._ Cf. _Hist. des Ducs_, p. 153.
[1087] W. Coventry, _l.c._
[1088] R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 340. Cf. R. Coggeshall, p. 174, and W.
Coventry, vol. ii. p. 225.
[1089] Gir. Cambr. vol. i. p. 401.
[1090] W. Coventry, vol. ii. pp. 224, 225.
[1091] _Rot. Pat._ p. 154 b. This disposes of R. Coggeshall’s assertion
(p. 174) that Stephen went “rege invito et ei minas intentante.”
[1092] _Rot. Pat._ p. 182.
[1093] _Ib._ p. 182 b (dateless).
[1094] See above, pp. 182 and 225.
[1095] In the “Articles of the Barons,” c. 49, this reservation-clause
ran: “Rex faciet eos securos per cartas archiepiscopi et episcoporum et
magistri Pandulfi quod nihil impetrabit _a domino Papa_,” etc. In the
Charter, c. 61, “_ab aliquo_” was substituted for “a domino Papa,” and
the security to be given by letters patent of Pandulf and the bishops
was made to refer to the keeping of the Charter in general (_ib._ c.
62), instead of to that one particular point.
[1096] R. Wendover, vol. iii. pp. 322–7.