Old historians generally gave kings bad characters, but in the reaction
from this indiscriminate censure we get a school of writers who praise
too much. Treacle has taken the place of vinegar in writing history.
Thus, Green makes heroes of the coarse Saxon savages and heathen;
Froude has painted the picture of Henry VIII so his own mother—much
more his multitudinous wives—would not recognize it; even Benedict
Arnold and Judas Iscariot have their eulogists. Nevertheless, no one,
so far as I have read, has had a good word to say of King John. Green
vouchsafes “the sober judgment of history” in ratification of the
Billingsgatish opinion: “Foul as it is, hell itself is defiled by the
fouler presence of John.” I have no kalsomine to mix for him who seems
by all accounts to have been worse than his Satanic Majesty, in that
John _is_ “as black as he is painted.” Yet it is to this royal monster
that England owes her Great Charter of Rights and Freedom, and one of
her red letter days.
The boy whose impudence and mean spirit made everybody detest him; the
youth who so embittered the last hours of his fond father, Henry II,
that he died cursing him; the prince who plotted the dethronement and
death of his brother, King Richard, absent on a crusade, and murdered
the rightful heir, the boy Arthur; the husband who deserted his own
wife and abducted the wife of his friend; the soldier who was always
provoking quarrels and always running away from fighting, and abandoned
all his continental possessions to his enemy without striking a blow;
the churchman so abjectly superstitious that he dared not go hunting
without a string of relics around his neck, yet quarrelled with the
Pope about the right to rob the Church revenues, and ended by basely
resigning his crown into the Pope’s hands and kissing the toe of his
legate; the lawgiver of his realm who reduced bribery to a department
of the royal exchequer, and opened book accounts with the subjects
whose hush-money and blood-money bought justice and the perversion of
justice, wherein it was recorded that one man paid to have the king’s
anger appeased, another “that the king should hold his tongue about
Henry Pinel’s wife,” and that a poor woman paid two hundred livres for
the privilege of visiting her husband in prison; the father of his
people who hired foreign plunderers to rob and murder his children,
who starved women and children to death in dungeons, crushed old men
under loads of lead, extorted rich men’s money by pulling their teeth,
one each day; who was so licentious that noble ladies had to flee the
realm to be safe from his approach or his violence—this “awful example”
of the race of kings was the chosen instrument for inciting England to
demand a charter as complete in its guarantees as his encroachments, as
beneficent as he was pestilent, as monumental grandly as he was meanly.
And so at last it came about that King John had not a friend left at
home or abroad.
He had one opponent whom both interest and principle moved to lead the
national demand for justice, which now took shape. That was Stephen
Langton, the Archbishop of Canterbury, whose appointment by the Pope
had been resisted by John. This worthy Saxon successor of Anselm and
Becket had hunted out in the garret of a monastery a copy of the
charter which Henry I, in the days of his honeymoon with his Saxon
wife, had granted to his people; he had called together the barons and
bishops, and proposed that John be made to renew that bill of rights,
and they had all laid their hands on the high altar of St. Edmondsbury
and sworn to make him do so, by arms if need be. Christmas Day, 1214,
was grandly celebrated, for then the burly knights in armor came to
John in London Temple and made their demand. The crafty king asked time
to consider of it, and to study the document. “How long?” demanded
Langton. “By Easter you shall have my answer,” promised the king.
He employed the interval in begging the Pope to order Langton to cease
his opposition, which the Pope did, and the archbishop did not. On
the contrary, Langton gave to the barons’ movement religious sanction
and the title “The Army of God and Holy Church,” thus neutralizing
the moral and spiritual influence of John’s only supporter, Rome.
John tried to buy off the opposition with promises, but no one would
trust the champion prevaricator of the age. He sent out proclamations
to all bailiffs to put down his enemies, but everybody took pride in
being his enemy, so there was no one to execute the writs. He made
a great pretense of going on a crusade and took the cross, but even
that all-compelling appeal was laughed at. John a crusader! See how
necessary it was that this king should have been so bad that no one
would trust or believe him, even with the Pope at his back and the
cross in his hands.
We of this country and time—all mankind, in fact, have to thank John
for all this resistance, for the more he struggled and plotted and
lied, the more they advanced their demands, so that by Easter “the Army
of God and Holy Church” had a far different charter to offer from that
they had sworn to before the last Christmas; like all nature at that
spring-dawn, the charter had put out new shoots. Freedom, too, had come
forth from the tomb.
On Easter day, 1215, the barons were assembled in large force at
Stamford; a committee headed by Langton went to the king with the
articles drawn up on parchment; the document made a big bundle; you
can see it yet in the British Museum. If the king was astonished at
the growth the document had made, he was more so at the growth of the
demands put forth in it, and he swore up and down he never would sign
it and grant liberties to his subjects which would make him a slave.
The barons seemed to think he would sign, nevertheless. May was nearly
gone before they brought the king to book. He tried to raise an army at
home, but no one came to his banner. He sent abroad to hire soldiers,
but they did not come. May 22, 1215, “the Army of God” marched
triumphant into London, and the kingdom was in its hands. Scotland and
Wales offered aid, and the northern barons came marching with their
retainers to the common cause. For two weeks John skulked about London
with seven horsemen only, and all England in arms against him. Thanks
to John again for this resistance! The barons improved the time adding
new and stricter conditions. But there was an end to it at last, and
the king sent to know when and where the papers should be executed.
“Let it be at Runnymede, and on the fifteenth day of June,” was the
answer. All circumstances conspire to make this appointment ideally,
even romantically, appropriate. Rune-mede was the Meadow of Council,
a grassy strip between the Thames and the foot-hills of Surrey, where
since old times earls and kings and the wise men had used to deliberate
and treat, in the open air as they lived. It spoke of a time when men
dared not trust each other in enclosures; of a people in thought and
temper as free and large as “all out-doors.” On that historical spot
the powers of England who could not trust her king met the king who
would trust no one.
It is the middle day of “the leafy month of June,” 1215. [How green and
beautiful England is in June!] “The Army of God and Holy Church” has
marched out from London with a great crowd of citizens, and sat down
along the Council Meadow. A rude table is set, and on it are spread
out the fairly-engrossed parchment and writing implements. The king
rides thither from Windsor Castle. Only three or four are with him, and
they belong to the barons’ party. John stands absolutely deserted, a
picture of regal isolation such as has been never seen before or since.
Distinguished monarch! He is smiling, courtly and complaisant, as he
well knows how to be. Yes, it affords him great pleasure to do this for
his beloved subjects.
“Hold,” says Langton, as the too-eager king grasps the pen, “there is
more to be considered. Your signature is to be affixed only of your
free will and desire, and you are to here swear not to renounce this
instrument on account of anything that has taken place up to this
moment, and to keep this covenant faithfully inviolate forever.”
Yes, the smiling John would so swear.
“Then for the better fulfillment of all these conditions, you will
consent to the appointment of five-and-twenty knights, who shall have
power to enforce this contract; you hereby give them power, in case any
article is infringed by you or your officers, to punish the offender
by fine, or, if necessary, to destrain your goods, and, in case of
resistance, to levy war against you and your castles, saving only the
safety of your person and your family; and all your subjects shall be
like yourself sworn to obedience to the twenty-five barons, executors
of this contract. In further security of all which, the Tower and city
of London are to remain in possession of the Archbishop until this act
shall be duly and faithfully so put in execution by you.”
Ah, the smile has faded from the king’s face, and pale and trembling
he abruptly leaves the council and returns to the castle. Once there
he raves and stamps like a caged madman. He froths at the mouth, rolls
on the floor and bites at every object near him. “They have given me
five-and-twenty over-lords,” roars the king repeatedly.
A week passed before all the formalities were complied with, the barons
remaining obstinately in camp, yielding not one jot of their demands,
and at last tiring out the king and securing his assent to everything.
What is Magna Charta? What are its provisions, what reforms did it
work, what good has it done? Everybody has heard of it, not one in
a thousand probably can answer these questions. It undertook two
things—reform of existing abuses and provisions for further justice;
remedy for the past, security for the future. Its great mission in
the cause of civilization has been as a rallying-point for popular
rights against royal encroachments. Kings and ministers in succeeding
centuries were again and again patiently brought back to that ground
and made to swear obedience to the principle of _limitation of
authority_. On this one point British obstinacy stuck and never budged,
and it is due to that resistance and persistance for Magna Charta that
limited monarchy, and constitutional, representative government stand
where they do on the earth to-day.
A remarkable thing about the instrument itself is the lawyer-like
accuracy of its language and the minuteness and fullness of its
provisions, showing care in its preparation and affording evidence of
the state of the jurisprudence and scholarship of the time, and of the
extent of the ramifications of the executive wrongs it sought to remedy.
But this is not a constitution, not a statement of rights; it is a
statute-law of the sort then possible, viz: in the form of a royal
edict. In each section the king ordains so and so. Nor is it a charter
in the interest of the rights of man. The bondsmen, who made the bulk
of the population of England at that time, are not included in its
benefits, and not mentioned save once, and that exception was doubtless
inserted for the benefit of the masters, for it exempts from execution
the tools of the slave, which of course belonged to his owner. So much
for what the charter is not and does not.
A large share of its articles are devoted to defining and regulating
the feudal tenure, duties and rights of the barons, and were quite
selfish in their scope, although they mark progress as reducing
ill-understood relations of king and feudatories for the first time to
a written form. But they went further, and stipulated that all these
privileges and immunities should apply to all classes of freemen—an
important point, as it made Normans and Englishmen equal before the
law. Much space is devoted to regulating business and commercial
matters; as leasehold rights, treatment of the estates of wards and
widows, fixing the widow’s right of dower, freeing of trade, home
and foreign, from restrictions and imposts, regulating fisheries,
bridge-building, highways, weights and measures.
Advancing into the domain of property and personal rights, it fixed
the terms and places of courts and opened them freely to all; no man
could be tried without witnesses, or detained in prison without trial;
borough franchises were declared inviolable. Then came three sections
which struck at the heart of the tyrannical practices of John’s reign:
Foreign officers, temporal or spiritual, were to be removed and their
holdings filled by Englishmen; and mercenary troops were to be removed
from the realm.
“Justice or right shall not be sold, delayed or denied to any man.”
And then came the declaration of civil rights, which has never ceased
to echo wherever free institutions aspired to live:
“No freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned, or disseized of rights and
property, or be outlawed or exiled, or otherwise destroyed but by
lawful judgment of his peers or the law of the land.”
This grand declaration was five hundred years ahead of the times,
and was not made a fact sooner than that; but all the same, it made
the condition of “freeman” in England a great prize for the slave to
struggle for, and under all the stormy vicissitudes of royal, baronial
and clerical oppression of succeeding ages; made the condition of men
in England infinitely superior to that of subjects of other realms—in
fact, and in the end, made England what she is, America what _she_ is
as to free institutions.
So, on the whole, those iron-fisted old barons did their work well,
according to their light and the condition of their times; and
Runnymede has become, by their great act, a shrine of freedom.
But here our thanks to John must cease. His phenomenal wickedness had
done the world all the good it could. He did not mean it, of course.
When he had signed the charter, and as soon as the Army of God had
dispersed, he sent to the Pope for absolution from his oath, and to
the continent for an army of murderers and marauders. He hurled upon
his realm the excommunications of the Church and the torch and sword
of his mercenaries. He went through England from end to end, as if
determined to annihilate all life and property in his wild, insatiable
revenge. His career of ruin was short. We regret that it could not have
been terminated by the sword of justice, instead of by nature, and so
have rounded up the measure of retribution. But every writer and every
reader of English history, from that day to this, has in thought and
wish constituted himself John’s executioner, and, setting off against
the glory of Runnymede his detestable career, has learned to loathe
injustice, treachery, cowardice, and sin in high places.
[To be continued.]
* * * * *
We can not be just if we are not kind.—_Vauvenargues.