According to the agreement they had made the barons came together at London soon after January 1, 1215, with some show of arms, and demanded of the king the confirmation of the charter of Henry I. John replied that the matter was new and important, and that he must have some time for consideration, and asked for delay until the octave of Easter, April 26. With reluctance the barons made this concession, Stephen Langton, William Marshal, and the Bishop of Ely becoming sureties for the king that he would then give satisfaction to all. The interval which was allowed him John used in a variety of attempts to strengthen himself and to prepare for the trial of arms which he must have known to be inevitable. On the 21st of the previous November he had issued a charter granting to the cathedral churches and monasteries throughout England full freedom of election, and this charter he now reissued a few days after the meeting with the barons. If this was an attempt to separate the clergy from the cause of the barons, or to bring the archbishop over wholly to his own side, it was a failure. About the same time he adopted a familiar expedient and ordered the oath of allegiance to himself against all men to be taken throughout the country, but he added a new clause requiring men to swear to stand by him against the charter.[80] Since the discussion of the charter had begun a general interest in its provisions had been excited, and the determination to secure the liberties it embodied had grown rapidly, so that now the king quickly found, by the opposition it aroused, that in this peculiar demand he had overshot the mark, and he was obliged to recall his orders. Naturally John turned at once to the pope, who was now under obligation to protect him from his enemies, but his envoy was followed by Eustace de Vescy, who argued strongly for the barons' side. The pope's letters to England in reply did not afford decisive support to either party, though more in favour of the king's, who was exhorted, however, to grant "just petitions" of the barons. On Ash Wednesday John went so far as to assume the cross of the crusader, most likely to secure additional favour from the pope, who was very anxious to renew the attempt that had failed in the early part of his reign, no doubt having in mind also the personal immunities it would secure him. For troops to resist the barons in the field the king's reliance was chiefly, as it had been during all his reign, on soldiers hired abroad, and he made efforts to get these into his service from Flanders and from Poitou, promising great rewards to knights who would join him from thence, as well as from Wales.
John's preparations alarmed the barons, and they determined not to wait for April 26, the appointed day for the king's answer. They came together in arms at Stamford, advanced from thence to Northampton, and then on to Brackley to be in the neighbourhood of the king, who was then at Oxford. Their array was a formidable one. The list recorded gives us the names of five earls, forty barons, and one bishop, Giles de Braóse, who had family wrongs to avenge; and while the party was called the Northerners, because the movement had such strong support in that part of England, other portions of the country were well represented. Annalists of the time noticed that younger men inclined to the side of the insurgents, while the older remained with the king. This fact in some cases divided families, as in the case of the Marshals, William the elder staying with John, while William the younger was with the barons. That one abode in the king's company does not indicate, however, that his sympathies in this struggle were on that side. Stephen Langton was in form with the king and acted as his representative in the negotiations, though it was universally known that he supported the reforms asked for. It is probable that this was true also of the Earl of Pembroke. These two were sent by John to the barons to get an exact statement of their demands, and returned with a "schedule," which was recited to the king point by point. These were no doubt the same as the "articles" presented to the king afterwards, on which the Great Charter was based. When John was made to understand what they meant, his hot, ancestral temper swept him away in an insane passion of anger. "Why do they not go on and demand the kingdom itself?" he cried, and added with a furious oath that he would never make himself a slave by granting such concessions.
When the barons received their answer, they decided on immediate war. As they viewed the case, this was a step justified by the feudal law. It was their contention that the reforms they demanded had been granted and recognized as legal by former kings. In other words, their suzerain was denying them their hereditary rights, acknowledged and conceded by his predecessors. To the feudal mind the situation which this fact created was simple and obvious. They were no longer bound by any fealty to him. It was their right to make war upon him until he should consent to grant them what was their due. Their first step was to send to the king the formal diffidatio prescribed for such cases, withdrawing their fealty and notifying him of their intention to begin war. Then choosing Robert Fitz Walter their commander, under the title of Marshal of the Army of God and Holy Church, they began the siege of Northampton, but were unable to take it from lack of siege machinery. On May 17 the barons, having in the meantime rejected several unsatisfactory proposals of the king, entered London at the request of the chief citizens, though the tower was still held by John's troops. The great strength of the barons at this time as against the king was not, however, their possession of London, or the forces which had taken the field in their cause, but the fact that John had practically no part of England with him beyond the ground commanded by the castles still held by his foreign soldiers. Pleas ceased in the exchequer, we are told, and the operations of the sheriffs, because no one could be found who would pay the king anything or show him any obedience, and many of the barons, who up to this time had stood with him, now joined the insurgents. No help could be had for some time from the pope. Langton refused to act at the king's request and excommunicate his enemies. There was nothing for John to do but to yield and trust that time would bring about some change to relieve him of the obligations he must assume.
On June 8 John granted a safe conduct to representatives of the barons to negotiate with him to hold good until the 11th, and later extended the period until the 15th. He was then at Windsor, and the barons from London came to Staines and camped in the field of Runnymede. The "Articles" were presented to the king in form, and now accepted by him, and on the basis of them the Great Charter was drawn up and sealed on June 15, 1215.
In the history of constitutional liberty, of which the Great Charter is the beginning, its specific provisions are of far less importance than its underlying principle. What we to-day consider the great safeguards of Anglo-Saxon liberty are all conspicuously absent from the first of its creative statutes, nor could any of them have been explained in the meaning we give them to the understanding of the men who framed the charter. Consent to taxation in the modern sense is not there; neither taxation nor consent. Trial by jury is not there in that form of it which became a check on arbitrary power, nor is it referred to at all in the clause which has been said to embody it. Parliament, habeas corpus, bail, the independence of the judiciary, are all of later growth, or existed only in rudimentary form. Nor can the charter be properly called a contract between king and nation. The idea of the nation, as we now hold it, was still in the future, to be called into existence by the circumstances of the next reign. The idea of contract certainly pervades the document, but only as the expression of the always existent contract between the suzerain and his vassals which was the foundation of all feudal law. On the other hand, some of the provisions of our civil liberty, mainly in the interest of individual rights, are plainly present. That private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation, that cruel and unusual punishments shall not be inflicted nor excessive fines be imposed, that justice shall be free and fair to all, these may be found almost in modern form.
But it is in none of these directions that the great importance of the document is to be sought. All its specific provisions together as specific provisions are not worth, either in themselves or in their historical influence, the one principle which underlies them all and gives validity to them all—the principle that the king must keep the law. This it was that justified the barons in their rebellion. It was to secure this from a king who could not be bound by the ordinary law that the Great Charter was drawn up and its clauses put into the form in which they stand. In other words, the barons contended that the king was already bound by the law as it stood, and that former kings had recognized the fact. In this they were entirely correct. The Great Charter is old law. It is codification, or rather it is a selection of those points of the existing law which the king had constantly violated, for the purpose of stating them in such form that his specific pledge to regard them could be secured, and his consent to machinery for enforcing them in case he broke his pledge. The source of the Great Charter, then, of its various provisions and of its underlying principle, must be sought in the existing law that regulated the relations between the king and the barons—the feudal law.
From beginning to end the Great Charter is a feudal document. The most important of its provisions which cannot be found in this law, those which may perhaps be called new legislation, relate to the judicial system as recently developed, which had proved too useful and was probably too firmly fixed to be set aside, though it was considered by the barons to infringe upon their feudal rights and had been used in the past as an engine of oppression and extortion. In this one direction the development of institutions in England had already left the feudal system behind. In financial matters a similar development was under rapid way, but John's effort to push forward too fast along that line was one cause of the insurrection and the charter, and of the reaction in this particular which it embodies. As a statement of feudal law the Great Charter is moderate, conservative, and carefully regardful of the real rights of the king. As a document born in civil strife it is remarkable in this respect, or would be were this not true of all its progeny in Anglo-Saxon history. Whoever framed it must have been fair-minded and have held the balance level between king and insurgents. Its provisions in regard to wardship and marriage have been called weak. They are not weak; they are just, and as compared with the corresponding provisions of the charter of Henry I they are less revolutionary, and leave to the king what belonged to him historically—the rights which all English kings had exercised and which in that generation Philip of France also had repeatedly exercised, even against John himself.
But the chief feature of the Great Charter apart from all its specific enactments, that on which it all rests, is this, that the king has no right to violate the law, and if he attempts to do so, may be constrained by force to obey it. That also is feudal law. It was the fundamental conception of the whole feudal relationship that the suzerain was bound to respect the recognized rights of his vassal, and that if he would not, he might be compelled to do so; nor was it in England alone that this idea was held to include the highest suzerain, the lord paramount of the realm.[81] Clause 61 which to the modern mind seems the most astonishing of the whole charter, legalizing insurrection and revolution, contains nothing that was new, except the arrangement for a body of twenty-five barons who were to put into orderly operation the right of coercion. It is certainly not necessary to show by argument the supreme importance of this principle. It is the true corner-stone of the English constitution. It was the preservation of this right, its development into new forms to meet the changing needs of the state, that created and protected constitutional liberty, and it was the supreme service of the Great Charter, far beyond any accomplished by any one clause or by all specific clauses together, to carry over from feudalism this right and to make it the fostering principle of a new growth in which feudalism had no share.[82]
It may be that the barons believed they were demanding nothing in the Great Charter that had not been granted by former kings or that the king was not bound by the law to observe. It may be possible to prove that this belief was historically correct in principle if not in specific form; but the king could not be expected to take the same view of the case. He had been compelled to renounce many things that he had been doing through his whole reign, and some things, as he very well knew, that had been done by his father and brother before him. He may honestly have believed that he had been forced to surrender genuine royal rights. He certainly knew that if he faithfully kept its provisions, the task of raising the necessary money to carry on the government, already not easy, would become extremely difficult if not impossible. It is not likely that John promised to be bound by the charter with any intention of keeping his promise. He had no choice at the moment but to yield, and if he yielded, the forces of the barons would probably scatter, and the chances favour such a recovery of his strength that with the help of the pope he could set the charter aside. At first nothing could be done but to conform to its requirements, and orders were sent throughout the country for the taking of the oath in which all men were to swear to obey the twenty-five barons appointed guardians of the charter. Juries were to be chosen to inquire into grievances, and some of the foreign troops were sent home. Suspicions began to be felt, however, in regard to the intentions of the king during the negotiations concerning details which followed the signing of the charter. A council called to meet at Oxford about the middle of July, he refused to attend. Nor were provocations and violations of the spirit of the charter wanting on the part of the barons. Certain of the party, indeed, "Trans-Humbrians" they are called, probably the extreme enemies of the king, had withdrawn from the conference at Runnymede, and now refused to cease hostilities because they had had no part in making peace. The royal officers were maltreated and driven off, and the king's manors plundered.
By August John was rapidly preparing for a renewal of the war. He sent out orders to get the royal castles ready for defence. His emissaries were collecting troops in Flanders and Aquitaine. Philip Augustus's Count of Britanny, Peter of Dreux, was offered the honour of Richmond, which former counts had held, if he would come to John's aid with a body of knights. Money does not seem to have been lacking through the struggle that followed, and John's efforts to collect mercenary troops were abundantly successful. Dover was appointed as the gathering-place of his army, both as a convenient landing-place for those coming from abroad and for strategic reasons. As it became evident that the charter had not brought the conflict to an end, the barons were obliged to consider what their next step should be. In clause 61 of the charter in regard to coercing the king, they had bound themselves not to depose him, but the arrangements made in that clause were never put into operation, nor could they be. There was only one way of dealing with a king who obstinately insisted on his rights, as he regarded them, against the law, and that was by deposition. The leaders of the barons now decided that this step was necessary, and an effort was made to unite all barons in taking it, but those who had been with the king before refused, and some members of the baronial party itself were not willing to go so far, nor were the clergy. The pope was making his position perfectly plain. Before the meeting at Runnymede he had ordered the excommunication of the disturbers of the king and kingdom; and when this sentence was published later, the barons might pretend that the king was the worst disturber of the kingdom, but they really knew what the pope intended. In September the Bishop of Winchester and Pandulf, representing the pope, suspended Archbishop Langton because of his refusal to enforce the papal sentences. By the end of the month the news reached England of Innocent's bull against the charter itself, declaring it null and void, and forbidding the king to observe it or the barons to require it to be kept under penalty of excommunication. Doubtless John expected this from the pope, and if his own view of the charter were correct, Innocent's action would be entirely within his rights. No vassal had a right to enter into any agreement which would diminish the value of his fief, and John had done this if the rights that he was exercising in 1213 were really his. It was apparently about this time that the insurgent barons determined to transfer their allegiance to Louis of France. We are told that they selected him because, if he were king of England, most of John's mercenaries would leave his service since they were vassals of France; but Louis was really the only one available who could be thought to represent in any way the old dynasty, and it would certainly be remembered that he had been proposed for the place in 1213. Negotiations were begun to induce him to accept, but in the meantime John had secured a sufficient force to take the offensive, and was beginning to push the war with unusual spirit and vigour. A part of his force he sent to relieve Northampton and Oxford, besieged by the barons, and he himself with the rest set out to take Rochester castle which was held against him. Repulsed at first, he succeeded in a second attempt to destroy the bridge across the Medway to cut off communication with London, and began a regular siege which he pressed fiercely. The garrison was not large, but they defended themselves with great courage, having reason to fear the consequences of yielding, and prolonged the siege for seven weeks. Even after the keep had been in part taken by undermining the wall they maintained themselves in what was left until they were starved into surrender. It was only the threat that his mercenaries would leave him for fear of reprisals that kept John from hanging his prisoners. During this siege the barons in London had remained in a strange inactivity, making only one half-hearted attempt to save their friends, seemingly afraid to meet the king in the field, and accused of preferring the selfish security and luxury of the capital. This was their conduct during the whole of the winter while their strongholds were captured and their lands devastated in all parts of England by the forces of their enemy, for John continued his campaign. Soon after the capture of Rochester he marched through Windsor to the north of London and, leaving a part of his army under the Earl of Salisbury to watch the barons and to lay waste their lands in that part of the country, he passed himself through the midlands to the north, destroying everything belonging to his enemies that he could find and not always distinguishing carefully between friends and foes. England had not for generations suffered such a harrying as it received that winter. So great was the terror created by the cruelties practised that garrisons of the barons' castles, it is said, fled on the news of the king's approach, leaving the castles undefended to fall into his hands. The march extended as far as Scotland. Berwick was taken and burnt, and the parts of the country about were laid waste in revenge for the favour which King Alexander had shown the barons. In March, 1216, John returned to the neighbourhood of London, leaving a new track of devastation further to the east, and bringing with him a great store of plunder.