203. Summary.
John's reign may be regarded as a turning point in English history.
1. Through the loss of Normandy, the Norman nobility found it for their interest to make the welfare of England and of the English race one with their own. Thus the two peoples became more and more united, until finally all differences ceased.
2. In demanding and obtainign the Great Charter, the Church and the nobility made common cause with all classes of the people. That document represents the victory of the entire nation. We shall see that the next eighty years will be mainly taken up with the efforts of the nation to hold fast to what it had gained.
Henry III—1216-1272
204. Accession and Character.
John's eldest son, Henry, was crowned at the age of nine. During his long and feeble reign of fifty-six years England's motto might well have been the warning words of Scripture, "Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child!" since a child he remained to the last; for if John's heart was of millstone, Henry's was of wax.
Dante in one of his poems, written perhaps not long after Henry's death, represents him as he sees him in imagination just on the borderland of purgatory. The King is not in suffering, for as he has done no particular good, so he has done no great harm. He appears "as a man of simple life, spending his time singing psalms in a narrow valley."
That shows one side of his negative character; the other was his love of extravagance, vain display, and instability of purpose. Much of the time he drifted about like a ship without compass or rudder.
205. Reissue of the Great Charter.