Notwithstanding all the faults of this prince, his firmness against the papal power is to be commended. Two of his bishops having a controversy, there was an appeal to the pope, who sent a legate to determine it; but Richard prevailed on the parties to refer it to his arbitration, and would not suffer the legate to enter England, till he had made an end of the business; and when he did come, the king suffered him not to excercise his legatine power in any but one single point, and that by his express permission. Notwithstanding all the steps taken in favour of John, in order to pave the way for his succession, the notion of Arthur’s hereditary right had taken such strong root in the minds of many, that, had he been in England, and of a sufficient age to manage his affairs, he might have had a fair prospect of success[385].
The lower people indeed were easily prevailed on by his agents to take the oath of fealty to John, while the prelates, and nobility in general, retired to their castles, as deliberating what steps they should take; but, at length, by magnificent grants, and more magnificent promises, they were prevailed on to come in, and he mounted the throne without opposition. But in the French provinces his usurpation met with more resistance. Arthur had many partizans, and his cause was espoused by Philip of France, the lord paramount, not with an intention to strip John of all; for that, with Britany, would have made Arthur too powerful; but with a design to divide the dominions more equally between them, and perhaps to clip off a part for himself, as he afterwards did Normandy, as being forfeited by a sentence of the peers of France, by John’s murder of Arthur. By the way, I shall observe, that this sentence was notoriously unjust. By the laws of France, Arthur was the undoubted heir of Normandy, and on his death his sister ought to have succeeded, nor ought the duchy to have been forfeited by the crime of a wrongful possessor. Or, taking it the other way, that Philip had a right to choose his vassal, and, consequently, that the investiture he gave to John was valid; then was he rightful duke of Normandy, and Arthur, as duke of Britany, was his vassal, and had justly forfeited his life, by rebelling and endeavouring to depose his liege lord. That John was guilty of this crime there was no room to doubt; and truly, from the whole of his conduct from that time, he seemed to have been infatuated by the terrors of his conscience; for it was but little less than frenzy. He knew he was, by this cruel act, become the detestation of his subjects in general, and that his father, in the midst of his power and popularity, had been humbled by the Pope; and yet, at the same time, he trampled on the liberties of the former, and oppressed them in the most outrageous manner, and while his subjects were thus disaffected, he openly set the latter at defiance.
To this reign, however, so inglorious, and so miserable to the English of that age, do their successors owe the ascertaining their liberties. He was, if we except William Rufus, the first of the kings that openly professed to rule by arbitrary power. I do not mean to deny that every one of his predecessors from the Conquest had, in some particular or other encroached on their people, but then there were either peculiar circumstances of distress, that almost enforced and excused them, or one or two wrong steps were atoned for by the greatness and goodness of their general conduct. It is very observable, that, as England is almost the only country in Europe that hath preserved its liberties, so was it the first wherein the kings set up for absolute power: and the preservation of them, I apprehend, was in a great measure owing thereto, that this claim was started there when the feudal principles, and the spirit of independency, except only in feudal matters, were in their vigour, and consequently raised such a spirit of jealousy and watchfulness, as, though it hath sometimes slept, could never be extinguished; whereas, in other countries, the progress of arbitrary power hath been more gradual. It hath made its advances when the feudal system was in its wane, and when the minds of men, by the introduction of the civil and canon law, were prepared for it.
What encouraged the kings of England to attempt this sooner than other monarchs, we may judge, was the greater disparity in riches between them and their vassals, than was in other countries; so that nothing much less than a general confederacy could curb them; whereas, abroad, two or three potent vassals were an overmatch for the sovereign. Besides, having subjects on each side of the water, not knit together in any common interest, they might hope to use the one to quell the other. But whatever was the cause, so was the fact; and John, even before the death of Arthur, having removed the dread of a competitor, shewed, by a most extraordinary step, what kind of sovereign he was like to prove. By the law of these days a vassal was to pay his relief to his superior out of his own demesnes, and the profits of his seignory, and had no right to demand aid for that purpose from his sub-vassals; John having detached Philip from his nephew’s interest, by ceding a part of his French territories, was to pay twenty thousand marks for the relief of the rest; and, to receive this sum, he, by his own authority, laid three shillings on every hide of land in England; thus making England to pay that relief for his foreign dominions, which his foreign subjects themselves were not obliged to pay.
The next instance was in favour of the Pope, under pretence of the holy war. Innocent had laid a tax upon the clergy, of the fortieth of their revenues, and sent a collector to England to gather it, whom John, of his own authority, empowered to collect it from the laity. These two impositions were submitted to, in as much as there was no plan of opposition then formed; but they afterwards occasioned great discontent among a people, who thought no taxes could be raised without their own consent. Accordingly, the next time he summoned his military tenants to attend him into France, they assembled at Leicester, and agreed to refuse attendance, unless he would restore their privileges; for though, by the law of the Conqueror, they were obliged to go, they looked upon this obligation as suspended by his behaviour. However, they had not yet sufficiently smarted, to unite them thoroughly, and this affair was made up by his accepting a scutage.
To enumerate all the exorbitancies he committed would be tedious, and unnecessary, as the remedies prescribed in Magna Charta sufficiently point out the grievances. Let it suffice to say, in general, that he oppressed his military tenants by exacting extravagant reliefs, by disparagement of heirs, by wasting his wards lands, by levying exorbitant scutages, by summoning them to war, and delaying them so long at the place of transportation that they were obliged to return home, having spent all their money; or, when they were transported, keeping them inactive till they were obliged to return for the same reason, and then, without trial, seizing their lands as forfeited. The same oppressions he extended to others, seized lands and tenements at will and pleasure, imprisoned whom he pleased, laid heavy talliages on the socage tenants and boroughs, without any regard to the privileges they had obtained from his predecessors; and having, by these means excited the detestation of his subjects, and forfeited his reputation by losing Normandy by his indolence, he took it into his head that he was a match for the Pope, and engaged in a contest with his Holiness, which subjected him and his kingdom to the Roman See, tho’ eventually it contributed not a little to the recovery of his subjects liberties.[386] The manner in which this happened shall be the subject of the ensuing lecture.
LECTURE XXXVII.
John’s dispute with the court of Rome—Cardinal Langton promoted to be Archbishop of Canterbury—Pope Innocent lays the kingdom under an interdict—John is excommunicated—His submission to Innocent—The discontents of the Barons—Magna Charta and Charta de Foresta—An examination of the question, Whether the rights and liberties, contained in these charters, are to be considered as the antient rights and liberties of the nation, or as the fruits of rebellion, and revocable by the successors of John?