A Popular History of England, From the Earliest Times to the Reign of Queen Victoria; Vol. I

by François Guizot

The arms of his temporal enemies had triumphed. John Lackland was about to bring down upon himself the spiritual thunders; a conflict had arisen between the king and the chapter of Canterbury about the election of an archbishop. The Pope settled the question by nominating Cardinal Stephen Langton, who was then at Rome, and whose merit was known to the pontiff. The monks of Canterbury recognized him, and John caused them to be driven from their cloisters by two knights, sword in hand. The Pope instructed the three bishops to pronounce an interdict in England, authorizing at the same time the English barons, who were, he knew, secretly discontented, to aid him in snatching their country from ruin. The bishops pronounced the terrible sentence, and at once left King John's dominions. The barons did not dare to rebel; the king had taken possession of a large number of children of the noblest families as hostages. He had sent Peter of Maulac to demand the sons of William of Braose, Lord of Bramber in Sussex. "By my faith," said the lady of the castle, "he did not take such care of his nephew that I should trust my children to him." Peter of Maulac made prisoners of the lady and her children, who died of hunger in their prison; Lord Bramber died of grief in consequence.

The interdict had lasted one year; the churches were closed. No more bell-ringing, no religious services, no marriages, no prayers over the graves; the baptism of newly born children and the administration of extreme unction were the only concessions made by the Church. In 1209, the Pope sent a bull of excommunication against the king; the blow was foreseen, and the approaches were so zealously guarded that the papal missive could not gain admission; but John knew that a sentence of deposition would follow that of excommunication; and this proceeding, although unproductive of practical results in itself, assumed a terrible degree of importance when it was known that King Philip-Augustus was ready to carry it into execution. It is related that at this time John, in despair at his struggle against the Church, conceived the idea of begging the assistance of the Mussulmans, and that he sent an embassy to the Emir El-Hassiz in Spain, proposing to embrace the religion of Islamism and to become the vassal of the Emir, if the latter would cross the Pyrenees, enter into France, and thus draw off the forces of King Philip. The Emir listened gravely, only giving vague answers. When the emissaries had retired, the Mussulman called back one of them, a priest "Tell me," he asked him, "in the name of the Lord, from whom you expect your salvation, what kind of man your king really is." "He is a tyrant who will soon feel the effects of his subjects' anger," replied the monk; and the Emir refused all King John's offers.

In spite of the Pope's discontent and John's terror thereat, the latter had carried on successfully some expeditions against the insurgents in Ireland and Wales, when, in 1213, Innocent III. at length proclaimed his deposition, absolving all his vassals from their oath of allegiance, and making an appeal to all Christian princes to dethrone an impious tyrant. Stephen Langton was sent to King Philip to promise forgiveness of all the latter's sins if he would carry out the sentence of the Holy See. The French army was already being formed; King John had obtained a signal success over his adversary's fleet, and he was at Dover surrounded by an army of sixty thousand men, ready to encounter the invaders if their sovereign would lead them; but John was afraid of his subjects, mistrusting their fidelity; and he shrank as usual from giving battle to the enemy. The Pope's legate, Pandulph, came and met him at Dover. He represented to the king in the most terrible colors the strength of the French army, the discontent of the barons, and the anger of the exiles; the little courage that remained to the degenerate Plantagenet faded away from his heart. He was, besides, pursued by the recollection of a prediction of Peter the Hermit of Wakefield, which ran: "Before the day of the Ascension the king will have lost his crown." John resolved rather to drag it through the mire than to relax his hold of it.

The legate was a skilful diplomatist; before making public the result of his negotiations with the king, he demanded that all the exiled priests should be allowed to return with Langton at their head; and he also exacted an assurance that the clergy and laity would be indemnified for the losses which they had sustained through the interdict. The king signed this agreement on the 13th of May, 1213, and four barons affixed their seals to it. On the 14th John was engaged all day in private conference with the legate.

On the morning of the 15th of May the king rose early and went to the church of the Templars at Dover; a great crowd had already assembled there, and John, kneeling and clasping the hand of the legate in his own, swore in a loud clear voice an oath of allegiance to the Holy See. At the same time he placed in the hands of the pontiff's ambassador a document declaring that he, John, king of England and Ireland, in expiation of his sins against God and the Holy Church, without being constrained thereto by force or by the fear of the interdict, but of his own free will and with the consent of his barons, ceded to the Holy Pope Innocent and to his heirs and successors forever, the kingdom of England and dependency of Ireland, to be held by himself John and by his successors as a fief of the Holy Church, by paying an annual sum of a thousand marks of silver. At the same time the king offered a purse as an earnest of his submission. Pandulph threw it on the ground, trampling the money disdainfully under foot, but he accepted the crown which John had relinquished, and for five days it remained in his keeping. The feast of the Ascension had passed,—the king caused the Hermit of Wakefield to be tied to the tail of an untamed horse as a punishment for his predictions; but the people maintained that Peter had not been mistaken, because King John himself gave up his crown.

Scarcely had the legate accomplished his mission in England when he recrossed the sea to Philip's camp at Boulogne, announcing to the latter that the states of his enemy would for the future form part of the dominions of St. Peter, and that the King of France no longer had permission to invade them. "But," said Philip, "I have spent enormous sums of money in the preparations for war at the Pope's bidding, and on his having granted remission of my sins." He resolved to carry on the expedition, and was preparing to set sail, when a quarrel with the Count of Flanders caused him to turn his arms in that direction. The English fleet came to the assistance of the Count, and gained a brilliant victory over the vessels of Philip, who, finding himself deprived of the means of transport and revictualling, was obliged to renounce, for the time being, his expedition against England.

John had called all his subjects to arms; but when the barons met him at Portsmouth they refused to embark in the ships until the king had allowed the exiles whom he had called back to re-enter the country. Langton was hateful in the eyes of John, who looked upon him as the cause of the first dispute with Rome; but he was obliged to yield, and the archbishop and the monks of Canterbury once more set foot on English soil; the kiss of peace was exchanged, and John embarked, reckoning on the support of the barons. He arrived at Jersey, but the noblemen had not followed him, pleading that the period of their service was at an end, and they met at St. Alban's under the presidency of Chief-Justicier Fitz-Piers, a man of low origin, whose marriage with the Countess of Essex had placed him in a position which he maintained by reason of his ability. They had already published a series of royal declarations demanding the observance of the old laws, when John, furious at the desertion of his vassals, returned, pillaging and burning down everything on his way. The Archbishop of Canterbury came to him. "You are not fulfilling your oath, Sire," said he; "your vassals should be judged by their peers, and not coerced by arms." "Pay attention to your Church," cried the king angrily, "and leave me to govern the kingdom." Langton threatened to excommunicate all the agents of the royal vengeance, and John ended by summoning the barons to appear before him.

Langton, on the other hand, had convoked them at London. When the king entered the audience chamber, the cardinal held in his hand a parchment document. It was the charter of King Henry I.; this was neither the first nor the last charter which England received since the Conquest. William the Conqueror, in 1071, had guaranteed to his barons, by a charter, the performance of a contract entered into between them, promising to reform the abuses which had been pointed out to him, and securing to the Saxons the maintenance of the laws of Edward the Confessor. In 1101, King Henry I. had lately been proclaimed King of England; the Duke Robert was claiming the throne by virtue of his seniority. In order to secure the support of the Norman, as well as the Saxon barons, Henry had convoked in London a general assembly and signed a fresh charter, almost similar to his brother's. It was this document which Archbishop Langton had found, and which he was bringing to the barons assembled in London, like their ancestors, not, as of old, to receive a charter, but to force one upon the king.

King Stephen had also made the same promises, endowing the Church likewise with a charter setting forth its rights. Finally, Henry II., in 1154, had renewed the charters of King Stephen, and had caused a copy of the document to be deposited in all the churches; there is one of them remaining now. Cœur-de-Lion did not sign any charter, but that of John Lackland was destined to be glorious and powerful for ever afterwards under the title of Magna Charta. The barons swore to observe the injunctions of Henry I.'s charter, which had been presented to them by Langton, to remain faithful to one another, and to secure their liberties or to die defending them. This was on the 25th of August, 1213.