Langton had failed in his mission at Rome, and had been deposed from his see; the barons were excommunicated, and the city of London placed under an interdict, but the confederates took no notice of the two sentences. "The Pope had been misguided," they said, "and had meddled in the temporal affairs of England, which do not concern him, as the spiritual domain alone belongs to St. Peter and his successors."

John however had become possessed of two large armies of mercenary troops of Brabantines and of freelances, who willingly executed the sanguinary orders of their chief; one corps was sent to pursue their work of ravaging the counties of the East and the Centre, the other marched towards the North under the command of the king, repulsed into Scotland the young King Alexander, who had crossed the frontier to lend his aid to the barons, and burnt down and desolated the buildings in York, Northumberland, and Cumberland. Everywhere the barons, in retiring, would lay waste their houses and fields; everywhere the king burnt down whatever he found standing; but he was still advancing, while the confederates were retreating. They at length found themselves shut up in the city of London; all their castles had fallen into the hands of the tyrant, who had made a present of them to his followers, to Satan's guards, as the people called them. The families of the confederates were at the mercy of King John. The barons resolved upon their course of action, a bitter one, that of seeking aid abroad, and accordingly sent a deputation to Philip-Augustus, proposing to give the crown of England to his son Prince Louis, if he would come to their help with an army. His arrival, it was thought, would immediately thin the ranks of King John's supporters, for they were mostly Frenchmen, and would be unwilling to fight against their own countrymen.

Philip-Augustus only wanted a pretext to meddle in the affairs of England. He agreed to the proposals of the barons, not, however, without requiring hostages as a guarantee of good faith; and in spite of threats from the Pope, who forbade either the father or the son to invade a fief of the Holy Church, Prince Louis set sail in the month of July with a large army, raised chiefly through the personal efforts of his wife, Blanche of Castile, a niece of King John, in whose name Louis put forth his claim to the crown of England. John's fears did not wait for the landing of the French troops; he had left Dover, and had repaired to Bristol, where the legate awaited him. Prince Louis landed at Sandwich, and, almost without striking a blow, he marched to London, which city he entered on the 2nd of June, 1216. The entire population came to meet him, and, after having offered up a prayer to St. Paul, he received homage from the barons and citizens, promising to govern them according to their laws, to protect their rights, and to restore their property to them. The satisfaction was universal: the counties surrounding London submitted willingly to Prince Louis; the oppressed inhabitants of the North revolted. A large number of John's mercenary troops deserted him, to return to their homes or to rally round the standard of France; the nobility who had become reconciled to the king, in the presence of the reverses sustained by the national cause, abandoned him to join their old friends; and, lastly, Pope Innocent III. was just dead (16th July), and hence the powerful support of Rome was taken from him. John had only the fortresses defended by his partisans remaining to him.

Meanwhile, Prince Louis was stopped at Dover Castle, and the English barons at Windsor Castle. In vain did they attack the massive walls with a machine which came from France, and which was called the "Malvoisine." Hubert de Burgh held his ground firmly at Dover, and the siege of Windsor had been raised; the confederates had hoped to surprise the king at Cambridge; but John had eluded them, and had proceeded to Lincoln, of which city he took possession. The prospects of the confederation were not flourishing; the reinforcements, which had been sent from France, were checked by the English sailors who remained faithful to King John. Prince Louis displayed little activity, and treated his English allies in a haughty manner. He had already presented several estates to the noblemen who had accompanied him from France; one of them, the Viscount of Melun, was dead; and he had, it was said, confessed, when dying, that the intention of the French people, when their prince should be on the throne, was to treat the English like men who had shown themselves untrustworthy by reason of their treachery to their sovereign. Distrust and discord had entered into the allied camps; several barons opened negotiations with King John. The latter's position was ameliorating; he had just left Wisbeach, and desired to proceed to Cross-Keys, on the south of the Wash, when, on arriving at the ford, he beheld the rising tide suddenly engulf the long line of wagons which were carrying his luggage, his treasures, and his provisions. The troops had already crossed the river, and were in safety, but the king became furious at witnessing such an irreparable loss; he arrived, exhausted with rage, at the convent of the Cistercian monks at Swineshead. No event, however dreadful, troubled King John while at table; he ate some peaches and drank some new ale—so immoderately in fact, that he fell ill on the morrow, and, thinking that he was poisoned by the monks, he caused himself to be taken to Newark. Death, the only enemy that John could not escape from, awaited him there. He sent for a priest, nominated his son Henry as his successor, and dictated a letter to the new Pope, Honorius, to recommend his children to the care of the Holy Church. The remembrance of his crimes did not seem to trouble him on his death-bed; perhaps he held himself absolved from all his sins by his allegiance to the Holy See. "I commit my soul to God and my body to St. Wulstan," he said. He then expired on the 18th of October, 1216. He was buried at Worcester, in the church of Saint Wulstan. Death had at length delivered England of the cowardly and faithless tyrant whom she had for a long while submitted to, then vanquished, and against whom the country was still struggling in defence of Magna Charta, which, after the lapse of more than six centuries, remains the basis of English liberties.

Chapter IX.
King And Barons.
Henry III. (1216-1272.)

King John was buried when his young son was crowned at Gloucester, on the 28th of October, 1216, by the Pope's legate. He was ten years of age at the time, and his feeble hands confirmed without resistance the gift which his father had made to Rome of the kingdom of England. It was the vassal of the Church, who in the month of November, 1216, was confided to the care of the Earl of Pembroke, the most formidable of the barons who had remained faithful to King John, by reason of his orderly and prudent character, for he was as devoted to the liberties of his country as the barons who had mustered round the banner of Prince Louis. He was nominated "Protector" of the kingdom and of the king, and his first care was to make a revision of Magna Charta; he eliminated the temporary articles; confirmed a great number of clauses; others remained pending until the raising of a more numerous army; and the earl directed all his efforts against the French prince and his foreign adherents. The favors and good graces of the Protector drew to him all the barons who were deserting the French prince, and they were becoming every day more numerous. Their enmity had died out at the death of King John; the child who had just been crowned was their legitimate sovereign, descended from the kings whom they had loved and served. Louis saw his army rapidly decreasing; in consequence of the vigorous resistance of Hubert de Burgh, he had been unable to obtain possession of Dover Castle, which he had been besieging for some time. In vain had they endeavored to seduce him from his duty, by urging that the king to whom he had sworn allegiance was dead. "The king has left children," he answered, and Louis raised the siege to return to London, which still remained true to him. An armistice soon allowed him to go to France to collect reinforcements; but, in his absence, the insolence of Enguerrand of Coucy, whom he had left at the head of affairs, was spreading discontent, and the forces of the national party sprang up so rapidly that the prince, attacked on the sea by the sailors of the Cinque Ports, found some difficulty in returning to England. An army corps under the command of the Count of Perche was defeated by the Protector in the very streets of Lincoln, and the anathemas of Rome began to pour down upon Prince Louis and his adherents, who were excommunicated in a mass.

Louis was shut up in London, surrounded by his enemies; he asked for help from France, but his father, Philip-Augustus, would not become concerned in a quarrel with the Pope, and did not dare to act openly in his son's favor. It was Louis's wife, Blanche of Castile, who succeeded in raising considerable forces, which she sent to him under the care of a chief of adventurers named Eustace the Monk, because he had escaped from his monastery. The French fleet met Hubert de Burgh on the high seas. The struggle began. Eustace the Monk was defeated, and afterwards beheaded on the poop of his vessel. Hubert de Burgh returned triumphantly to Dover with his prizes.