Innocent, sensible that this flagrant usurpation would be highly resented by the court of England, wrote John a mollifying letter; sent him four golden rings set with precious stones; and endeavored to enhance the value of the present, by informing him of the many mysteries implied in it. He begged him to consider seriously the form of the rings, their number, their matter, and their color. Their form, he said, being round, shadowed out eternity, which had neither beginning nor end; and he ought thence to learn his duty of aspiring from earthly objects to heavenly, from things temporal to tilings eternal. The number four, being a square, denoted steadiness of mind, not to be subverted either by adversity or prosperity, fixed forever on the firm basis of the four cardinal virtues. Gold, which is the matter, being the most precious of metals, signified wisdom, which is the most valuable of all accomplishments, and justly preferred by Solomon to riches, power, and all exterior attainments. The blue color of the sapphire represented faith; the verdure of the emerald, hope; the redness of the ruby, charity; and the splendor of the topaz, good works.[*] By these conceits, Innocent endeavored to repay John for one of the most important prerogatives of his crown, which he had ravished from him; conceits probably admired by Innocent himself. For it is easily possible for a man, especially in a barbarous age, to unite strong talents for business with an absurd taste for literature and the arts.
John was inflamed with the utmost rage when he heard of this attempt of the court of Rome;[**] and he immediately vented his passion on the monks of Christ-church, whom he found inclined to support the election made by their fellows at Rome.
[* Rymer, vol. i. p. 139. M. Paris, p. 155]
[** Rymer, vol. i. p. 143.]
He sent Fulk de Cantelupe, and Henry de Cornhulle, two knights of his retinue, men of violent tempers and rude manners, to expel them the convent, and take possession of their revenues. These knights entered the monastery with drawn swords, commanded the prior and the monks to depart the kingdom, and menaced them, that in case of disobedience they would instantly burn them with the convent.[*] Innocent, prognosticating, from the violence and imprudence of these measures, that John would finally sink in the contest, persevered the more vigorously in his pretensions, and exhorted the king not to oppose God and the church any longer, nor to persecute that cause for which the holy martyr St. Thomas had sacrificed his life, and which had exalted him equal to the highest saints in heaven;[**] a clear hint to John to profit by the example of his father, and to remember the prejudices and established principles of his subjects, who bore a profound veneration to that martyr, and regarded his merits as the subject of their chief glory and exultation.
Innocent, finding that John was not sufficiently tamed to submission, sent three prelates, the bishops of London, Ely, and Worcester, to intimate, that, if he persevered in his disobedience, the sovereign pontiff would be obliged to lay the kingdom under an interdict.[***] All the other prelates threw themselves on their knees before him, and entreated him, with tears in their eyes, to prevent the scandal of this sentence, by making a speedy submission to his spiritual father, by receiving from his hands the new elected primate, and by restoring the monks of Christ-church to all their rights and possessions. He burst out into the most indecent invectives against the prelates; swore by God’s teeth, his usual oath, that, if the pope presumed to lay his kingdom under an interdict, he would send to him all the bishops and clergy of England, and would confiscate all their estates; and threatened that, if thenceforth he caught any Romans in his dominions, he would put out their eyes, and cut off their noses, in order to set a mark upon them, which might distinguish them from all other nations.[****]
[* M. Paris, p. 156. Trivet, p. 151. Ann. Waverl.
p. 169.]
[** M. Paris, p. 157.]
[*** M. Paris, p. 157.]
[**** M. Paris, p. 157.]
Amidst all this idle violence, John stood on such bad terms with his nobility, that he never dared to assemble the states of the kingdom, who, in so, just a cause, would probably have adhered to any other monarch, and have defended with vigor the liberties of the nation against these palpable usurpations of the court of Rome. Innocent, therefore, perceiving the king’s weakness, fulminated at last the sentence of interdict which he had for some time held suspended over him.[*]
The sentence of interdict was at that time the great instrument of vengeance and policy employed by the court of Rome; was denounced against sovereigns for the lightest offences; and made the guilt of one person involve the ruin of millions, even in their spiritual and eternal welfare. The execution of it was calculated to strike the senses in the highest degree, and to operate with irresistible force on the superstitious minds of the people. The nation was of a sudden deprived of all exterior exercise of its religion: the altars were despoiled of their ornaments: the crosses, the relics, the images, the statues of the saints were laid on the ground; and as if the air itself were profaned, and might pollute them by its contact, the priests carefully covered them up, even from their own approach and veneration. The use of bells entirely ceased in all the churches: the bells themselves were removed from the steeples, and laid on the ground with the other sacred utensils. Mass was celebrated with shut doors; and none but the priests were admitted to that holy institution. The laity partook of no religious rite, except baptism to new-born infants, and the communion to the dying: the dead were not interred in consecrated ground: they were thrown into ditches, or buried in common fields; and their obsequies were not attended with prayers or any hallowed ceremony Marriage was celebrated in the churchyards;[**] and that every action in life might bear the marks of this dreadful situation, the people were prohibited the use of meat, as in Lent, or times of the highest penance; were debarred from all pleasures and entertainments; and were forbidden even to salute each other, or so much as to shave their beards, and give any decent attention to their person and apparel. Every circumstance carried symptoms of the deepest distress, and of the most immediate apprehension of divine vengeance and indignation.
The king, that he might oppose the temporal to their spiritual terrors, immediately, from his own authority, confiscated the estates of all the clergy who obeyed the interdict;[***] banished the prelates, confined the monks in their convents, and gave them only such a small allowance from their own estates, as would suffice to provide them with food and raiment.
[* M. Paris, p. 157. Trivet, p. 152. Ann. Waverl.
p. 170. M. West. p. 268.]
[** Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 51.]
[*** Ann. Waverl. p. 170]