rigor of the feudal law or determinations in points which had been
left by that law or had become, by practice, arbitrary and ambiguous.
The reliefs of heirs succeeding to a military fee were ascertained: an
earl's and baron's at a hundred marks, a knight's at a hundred
shillings. It was ordained by the charter that, if the heir be a
minor, he shall, immediately upon his majority, enter upon his estate,
without paying any relief; the king shall not sell his wardship; he
shall levy only reasonable profits upon the estate, without committing
waste or hurting the property; he shall uphold the castles, houses,
mills, parks, and ponds, and if he commit the guardianship of the
estate to the sheriff or any other, he shall previously oblige them to
find surety to the same purpose.
During the minority of a baron, while his lands are in wardship, and
are not in his own possession, no debt which he owes to the Jews shall
bear any interest. Heirs shall be married without disparagement; and
before the marriage be contracted, the nearest relatives of the person
shall be informed of it. A widow, without paying any relief, shall
enter upon her dower, the third part of her husband's rents; she shall
not be compelled to marry, so long as she chooses to continue single;
she shall only give security never to marry without her lord's
consent. The king shall not claim the wardship of any minor who holds
lands by military tenure of a baron, on pretence that he also holds
lands of the crown by socage or any other tenure. Scutages shall be
estimated at the same rate as in the time of Henry I; and no scutage
or aid, except in the three general feudal cases--the king's
captivity, the knighting of his eldest son, and the marrying of his
eldest daughter--shall be imposed but by the great council of the
kingdom; the prelates, earls, and great barons shall be called to this
great council, each by a particular writ; the lesser barons by a
general summons of the sheriff. The king shall not seize any baron's
land for a debt to the crown if the baron possesses as many goods and
chattels as are sufficient to discharge the debt. No man shall be
obliged to perform more service for his fee than he is bound to by his
tenure. No governor or constable of a castle shall oblige any knight
to give money for castle guard, if the knight be willing to perform
the service in person, or by another able-bodied man; and if the
knight be in the field himself, by the king's command, he shall be
exempted from all other service of this nature. No vassal shall be
allowed to sell so much of his land as to incapacitate himself from
performing his service to his lord.
These were the principal articles, calculated for the interest of the
barons; and had the charter contained nothing further, national
happiness and liberty had been very little promoted by it, as it would
only have tended to increase the power and independence of an order of
men who were already too powerful, and whose yoke might have become
more heavy on the people than even that of an absolute monarch. But
the barons, who alone drew and imposed on the prince this memorable
charter, were necessitated to insert in it other clauses of a more
extensive and more beneficent nature: they could not expect the
concurrence of the people without comprehending, together with their
own, the interests of inferior ranks of men; and all provisions which
the barons for their own sake were obliged to make in order to insure
the free and equitable administration of justice, tended directly to
the benefit of the whole community. The following were the principal
clauses of this nature:
It was ordained that all the privileges and immunities above
mentioned, granted to the barons against the King, should be extended
by the barons to their inferior vassals. The King bound himself not to
grant any writ empowering a baron to levy aid from his vassals except
in the three feudal cases. One weight and one measure shall be
established throughout the kingdom. Merchants shall be allowed to
transact all business without being exposed to any arbitrary tolls and
impositions; they and all freemen shall be allowed to go out of the
kingdom and return to it at pleasure; London and all cities and burghs
shall preserve their ancient liberties, immunities, and free customs;
aids shall not be required of them but by the consent of the great
council; no towns or individuals shall be obliged to make or support
bridges but by ancient custom; the goods of every freeman shall be
disposed of according to his will; if he die intestate, his heirs
shall succeed to them. No officer of the crown shall take any horses,
carts, or wood, without the consent of the owner. The king's courts of
justice shall be stationary, and shall no longer follow his person;
they shall be open to everyone; and justice shall no longer be sold,
refused, or delayed by them.
Circuits shall be regularly held every year; the inferior tribunals of
justice, the county court, sheriff's turn, and courtleet shall meet at
their appointed time and place; the sheriffs shall be incapacitated to
hold pleas of the crown, and shall not put any person upon his trial,
from rumor or suspicion alone, but upon the evidence of lawful
witnesses. No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or dispossessed of
his free tenement and liberties, or outlawed, or banished, or anywise
hurt or injured, unless by the legal judgment of his peers or by the
law of the land; and all who suffered otherwise in this or the two
former reigns shall be restored to their rights and possessions. Every
freeman shall be fined in proportion to his fault; and no fine shall
be levied on him to his utter ruin; even a villein or rustic shall not
by any fine be bereaved of his carts, ploughs, and implements of
husbandry. This was the only article calculated for the interests of
this body of men, probably at that time the most numerous in the
kingdom.
It must be confessed that the former articles of the Great Charter
contain such mitigations and explanations of the feudal law as are
reasonable and equitable; and that the latter involve all the chief
outlines of a legal government, and provide for the equal distribution
of justice and free enjoyment of property; the great objects for which
political society was at first founded by men, which the people have a
perpetual and unalienable right to recall, and which no time, nor
precedent, nor statute, nor positive institution ought to deter them
from keeping ever uppermost in their thoughts and attention.
Though the provisions made by this charter might, conformably to the
genius of the age, be esteemed too concise, and too bare of
circumstances to maintain the execution of its articles, in opposition
to the chicanery of lawyers, supported by the violence of power, time
gradually ascertained the sense of all the ambiguous expressions; and
those generous barons, who first extorted this concession, still held
their swords in their hands, and could turn them against those who
dared, on any pretence, to depart from the original spirit and meaning
of the grant. We may now, from the tenor of this charter, conjecture
what those laws were of King Edward, which the English nation, during
so many generations, still desired, with such an obstinate
perseverance, to have recalled and established. They were chiefly
these latter articles of Magna Charta; and the barons who, at the
beginning of these commotions, demanded the revival of the Saxon laws,
undoubtedly thought that they had sufficiently satisfied the people by
procuring them this concession, which comprehended the principal
objects to which they had so long aspired.
But what we are most to admire is the prudence and moderation of those
haughty nobles themselves who were enraged by injuries, inflamed by
opposition, and elated by a total victory over their sovereign. They
were content, even in this plenitude of power, to depart from some
articles of Henry I's charter, which they made the foundation of their
demands, particularly from the abolition of wardships, a matter of the
greatest importance; and they seem to have been sufficiently careful
not to diminish too far the power and revenue of the crown. If they
appear, therefore, to have carried other demands to too great a
height, it can be ascribed only to the faithless and tyrannical
character of the King himself, of which they had long had experience,
and which they foresaw would, if they provided no further security,
lead him soon to infringe their new liberties, and revoke his own
concessions. This alone gave birth to those other articles, seemingly
exorbitant, which were added as a rampart for the safeguard of the
Great Charter.
The barons obliged the King to agree that London should remain in
their hands, and the Tower be consigned to the custody of the Primate
till the 15th of August ensuing or till the execution of the several
articles of the Great Charter. The better to insure the same end, he
allowed them to choose five-and-twenty members from their own body as
conservators of the public liberties; and no bounds were set to the
authority of these men either in extent or duration. If any complaint
were made of a violation of the charter, whether attempted by the
king, justiciaries, sheriffs, or foresters, any four of these barons
might admonish the king to redress the grievance; if satisfaction were
not obtained, they could assemble the whole council of twenty-five;
who, in conjunction with the great council, were empowered to compel
him to observe the charter, and, in case of resistance, might levy war
against him, attack his castles, and employ every kind of violence
except against his royal person and that of his queen and children.
All men throughout the kingdom were bound, under the penalty of
confiscation, to swear obedience to the twenty-five barons; and the
freeholders of each county were to choose twelve knights, who were to
make report of such evil customs as required redress, conformably to
the tenor of the Great Charter[56]. The names of those conservators
were: the Earls of Clare, Albemarle, Gloucester, Winchester, Hereford;
Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk; Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford; William
Mareschal, the younger; Robert Fitz-Walter, Gilbert de Clare, Eustace
de Vescey, Gilbert Delaval, William de Moubray, Geoffrey de Say, Roger
de Mombezon, William de Huntingfield; Robert de Ros, the Constable of
Chester; William de Aubenie, Richard de Perci, William Malet, John
Fitz-Robert, William de Lanvalay, Hugh de Bigod, and Roger de
Montfichet. These men were, by this convention, really invested with
the sovereignty of the kingdom; they were rendered coördinate with the
King, or rather superior to him, in the exercise of the executive
power; and as there was no circumstance of government which, either
directly or indirectly, might not bear a relation to the security or
observance of the Great Charter, there could scarcely occur any
incident in which they might not lawfully interpose their authority.
John seemed to submit passively to all these regulations, however
injurious to majesty. He sent writs to all the sheriffs ordering them
to constrain everyone to swear obedience to the twenty-five barons; he
dismissed all his foreign forces; he pretended that his government was
thenceforth to run in a new tenor and be more indulgent to the liberty
and independence of his people. But he only dissembled till he should
find a favorable opportunity for annulling all his concessions. The
injuries and indignities which he had formerly suffered from the Pope
and the King of France, as they came from equals or superiors, seemed
to make but small impression on him; but the sense of this perpetual
and total subjection under his own rebellious vassals sank deep in his
mind; and he was determined, at all hazards, to throw off so
ignominious a slavery.
He grew sullen, silent, and reserved; he shunned the society of his
courtiers and nobles; he retired into the Isle of Wight, as if
desirous of hiding his shame and confusion; but in this retreat he
meditated the most fatal vengeance against all his enemies. He
secretly sent abroad his emissaries to enlist foreign soldiers, and to
invite the rapacious Brabançons into his service, by the prospect of
sharing the spoils of England and reaping the forfeitures of so many
opulent barons who had incurred the guilt of rebellion by rising in
arms against him. And he despatched a messenger to Rome, in order to
lay before the Pope the Great Charter, which he had been compelled to
sign, and to complain, before that tribunal, of the violence which had
been imposed upon him.
Innocent, considering himself as feudal lord of the kingdom, was
incensed at the temerity of the barons, who, though they pretended to
appeal to his authority, had dared, without waiting for his consent,
to impose such terms on a prince, who, by resigning to the Roman
pontiff his crown and independence, had placed himself immediately
under the papal protection. He issued, therefore, a bull, in which,
from the plenitude of his apostolic power, and from the authority
which God had committed to him, to build and destroy kingdoms, to
plant and overthrow, he annulled and abrogated the whole charter, as
unjust in itself, as obtained by compulsion, and as derogatory to the
dignity of the apostolic see. He prohibited the barons from exacting
the observance of it; he even prohibited the King himself from paying
any regard to it; he absolved him and his subjects from all oaths
which they had been constrained to take to that purpose; and he
pronounced a general sentence of excommunication against everyone who
should persevere in maintaining such treasonable and iniquitous
pretensions.
The King, as his foreign forces arrived along with this bull, now
ventured to take off the mask; and, under sanction of the Pope's
decree, recalled all the liberties which he had granted to his
subjects, and which he had solemnly sworn to observe. But the
spiritual weapon was found upon trial to carry less force with it than
he had reason from his own experience to apprehend. The Primate
refused to obey the Pope in publishing the sentence of excommunication
against the barons; and though he was cited to Rome, that he might
attend a general council there assembled, and was suspended, on
account of his disobedience to the Pope and his secret correspondence
with the King's enemies; though a new and particular sentence of
excommunication was pronounced by name against the principal
barons--John still found that his nobility and people, and even his
clergy, adhered to the defence of their liberties and to their
combination against him; the sword of his foreign mercenaries was all
he had to trust to for restoring his authority.
The barons, after obtaining the Great Charter, seem to have been
lulled into a fatal security, and to have taken no rational measures,
in case of the introduction of a foreign force, for reassembling their
armies. The King was, from the first, master of the field, and
immediately laid siege to the castle of Rochester, which was
obstinately defended by William de Albiney, at the head of a hundred
and forty knights with their retainers, but was at last reduced by
famine. John, irritated with the resistance, intended to have hanged
the governor and all the garrison; but on the representation of
William de Mauleon, who suggested to him the danger of reprisals, he
was content to sacrifice, in this barbarous manner, the inferior
prisoners only. The captivity of William de Albiney, the best officer
among the confederated barons, was an irreparable loss to their cause;
and no regular opposition was thenceforth made to the progress of the
royal arms. The ravenous and barbarous mercenaries, incited by a cruel
and enraged prince, were let loose against the estates, tenants,
manors, houses, parks of the barons, and spread devastation over the
face of the kingdom.
Nothing was to be seen but the flames of villages, and castles reduced
to ashes, the consternation and misery of the inhabitants, tortures
exercised by the soldiery to make them reveal their concealed
treasures, and reprisals no less barbarous, committed by the barons
and their partisans on the royal demesnes, and on the estates of such
as still adhered to the Crown. The King, marching through the whole
extent of England, from Dover to Berwick, laid the provinces waste on
each side of him, and considered every estate which was not his
immediate property as entirely hostile and the object of military
execution. The nobility of the North in particular, who had shown
greatest violence in the recovery of their liberties, and who, acting
in a separate body, had expressed their discontent even at the
concessions made by the Great Charter, as they could expect no mercy,
fled before him with their wives and families, and purchased the
friendship of Alexander, the young King of Scots, by doing homage to
him.
The barons, reduced to this desperate extremity, and menaced with the
total loss of their liberties, their properties, and their lives,
employed a remedy no less desperate; and making applications to the
court of France, they offered to acknowledge Louis, the eldest son of
Philip, for their sovereign, on condition that he would afford them
protection from the violence of their enraged Prince. Though the sense
of the common rights of mankind, the only rights that are entirely
indefeasible, might have justified them in the deposition of their
King, they declined insisting before Philip on a pretension which is
commonly so disagreeable to sovereigns and which sounds harshly in
their royal ears. They affirmed that John was incapable of succeeding
to the crown, by reason of the attainder passed upon him during his
brother's reign, though that attainder had been reversed, and Richard
had even, by his last will, declared him his successor. They pretended
that he was already legally deposed by sentence of the peers of
France, on account of the murder of his nephew, though that sentence
could not possibly regard anything but his transmarine dominions,
which alone he held in vassalage to that crown. On more plausible
grounds they affirmed that he had already deposed himself by doing
homage to the Pope, changing the nature of his sovereignty, and
resigning an independent crown for a fee under a foreign power. And as
Blanche of Castile, the wife of Louis, was descended by her mother
from Henry II, they maintained, though many other princes stood before
her in the order of succession, that they had not shaken off the royal
family in choosing her husband for their sovereign.
Philip was strongly tempted to lay hold on the rich prize which was
offered to him. The legate menaced him with interdicts and
excommunications if he invaded the patrimony of St. Peter or attacked
a prince who was under the immediate protection of the holy see; but
as Philip was assured of the obedience of his own vassals, his
principles were changed with the times, and he now undervalued as much
all papal censures as he formerly pretended to pay respect to them.
His chief scruple was with regard to the fidelity which he might
expect from the English barons in their new engagements, and the
danger of intrusting his son and heir into the hands of men who might,
on any caprice or necessity, make peace with their native sovereign,
by sacrificing a pledge of so much value. He therefore exacted from
the barons twenty-five hostages of the most noble birth in the
kingdom; and having obtained this security, he sent over first a small
army to the relief of the confederates; then more numerous forces,
which arrived with Louis himself at their head.
The first effect of the young Prince's appearance in England was the
desertion of John's foreign troops, who, being mostly levied in
Flanders and other provinces of France, refused to serve against the
heir of their monarchy. The Gascons and Poictevins alone, who were
still John's subjects, adhered to his cause; but they were too weak to
maintain that superiority in the field which they had hitherto
supported against the confederated barons. Many considerable noblemen
deserted John's party--the earls of Salisbury, Arundel, Warrenne,
Oxford, Albemarle, and William Mareschal the Younger. His castles fell
daily into the hands of the enemy; Dover was the only place which,
from the valor and fidelity of Hubert de Burgh, the governor, made
resistance to the progress of Louis; and the barons had the melancholy
prospect of finally succeeding in their purpose, and of escaping the
tyranny of their own King, by imposing on themselves and the nation a
foreign yoke.
But this union was of short duration between the French and English
nobles; and the imprudence of Louis, who on every occasion showed too
visible a preference to the former, increased their jealousy which it
was so natural for the latter to entertain in their present situation.
The Viscount of Melun, too, it is said, one of his courtiers, fell
sick at London, and, finding the approaches of death, he sent for some
of his friends among the English barons, and, warning them of their
danger, revealed Louis's secret intentions of exterminating them and
their families as traitors to their Prince, and of bestowing their
estates and dignities on his native subjects, in whose fidelity he
could more reasonably place confidence. This story, whether true or
false, was universally reported and believed; and, concurring with
other circumstances which rendered it credible, did great prejudice to
the cause of Louis. The Earl of Salisbury and other noblemen deserted
again to John's party; and as men easily change sides in civil war,
especially where their power is founded on a hereditary and
independent authority and is not derived from the opinion and favor of
the people, the French Prince had reason to dread a sudden reverse of
fortune.
The King was assembling a considerable army with a view of fighting
one great battle for his crown; but passing from Lynne to
Lincolnshire, his road lay along the sea-shore, which was overflowed
at high water; and not choosing the proper time for his journey, he
lost in the inundation all his carriages, treasure, baggage, and
regalia. The affliction of this disaster, and vexation from the
distracted state of his affairs, increased the sickness under which he
then labored; and though he reached the castle of Newark, he was
obliged to halt there, and his distemper soon after put an end to his
life, in the forty-ninth year of his age and eighteenth of his reign,
and freed the nation from the dangers to which it was equally exposed
by his success or by his misfortunes.
THE GOLDEN BULL, "HUNGARY'S MAGNA CHARTA," SIGNED
A.D. _1222_
E.O.S.
During the century preceding the reign of Andrew II, King of
Hungary, which began in 1205, that country had been engaged
in frequent wars with Venice over the possession of
Dalmatia, but no event of recent years had given much
importance to Hungarian history. The reign of Andrew began
in a time of great confusion in state and church, when the
crusading spirit was still a power which both religious and
secular rulers found it convenient to turn to the
advancement of their own designs.
When Andrew deserted the cause of the crusaders in
Palestine, after an unsuccessful attack upon a tower on
Mount Tabor, he was doubtless piqued at the failure of the
King of Jerusalem to render him any support in ordering his
affairs at home, where, under his viceroy, the virtual
absolutism of the government had become endangered. Out of
the conditions which confronted him on his arrival in
Hungary came the memorable event--forming one of the great
chapters in his country's annals--faithfully and succinctly
recounted in the following pages.