Philip called the miserable monarch to account for the death of Arthur, and, as a result, John lost his French possessions. Hence the weak and wicked son of Henry Plantagenet, since called Lackland, ceased to be a tax-payer in France, and proved to a curious world that a court fool in his household was superfluous.
John now became mixed up in a fracas with the Roman pontiff, who would have been justified in giving him a Roman punch. Why he did not, no Roman knows.
On the death of the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1205, Stephen Langton was elected to the place, with a good salary and use of the rectory. John refused to confirm the appointment, whereat Innocent III., the pontiff, closed the churches and declared a general lock-out. People were denied Christian burial in 1208, and John was excommunicated in 1209.
Philip united with the Pope, and together they raised the temperature for John so that he yielded to the Roman pontiff, and in 1213 agreed to pay him a comfortable tribute. The French king attempted to conquer England, but was defeated in a great naval battle in the harbor of Damme. Philip afterwards admitted that the English were not conquered by a Damme site; but the Pope absolved him for two dollars.
[Illustration: KING JOHN SIGNS THE MAGNA CHARTA.]
It was now decided by the royal subjects that John should be still further restrained, as he had disgraced his nation and soiled his ermine. So the barons raised an army, took London, and at Runnymede, June 15, 1215, compelled John to sign the famous Magna Charta, giving his subjects many additional rights to the use of the climate, and so forth, which they had not known before.
Among other things the right of trial by his peers was granted to the freeman; and so, out of the mental and moral chaos and general strabismus of royal justice, everlasting truth and human rights arose.
Scarcely was the ink dry on Magna Charta, and hardly had the king returned his tongue to its place after signing the instrument, when he began to organize an army of foreign soldiers, with which he laid waste with fire and sword the better part of "Merrie Englande."
But the barons called on Philip, the general salaried Peacemaker Plenipotentiary, who sent his son Louis with an army to overtake John and punish him severely. The king was overtaken by the tide and lost all his luggage, treasure, hat-box, dress-suit case, return ticket, annual address, shoot-guns, stab-knives, rolling stock, and catapults, together with a fine flock of battering-rams.
This loss brought on a fever, of which he died, in 1216 A.D., after eighteen years of reign and wind.