A large part of what is now France in those days still was under English rule; or, more correctly, England was ruled by the king of that part of France and by the warriors who had come from there. Richard and John, both Frenchmen by descent, had a young nephew named Arthur, who ruled over Normandy, Aquitaine, Bretagne and other French land, and this land John had long desired to add to his own private farm. One day Richard was killed while attacking a rebellious castle, and John at once said to himself,
"Now is my chance!"
He promptly made a prisoner of boy Arthur, and shut him up in a great tower. Very piteous tales are told of what happened next. Some say that John ordered a hardhearted servant to burn out Arthur's beautiful blue eyes with a hot iron. What John himself said was that "the boy died in prison," and that to him as next of kin belonged those fair lands of Aquitaine beyond the English Channel.
But what the world said, and especially the Pope, who at that time was the all-powerful ruler of all Christian men in matters of right and religion, was,
"You murdered him for his lands; but it shall profit you nothing, for not one penny of his wealth shall come to you. Another man shall be the heir." And it was so.
This made John very angry, but that did not give him the money for which he had so deeply sinned. We in our day wonder that he himself was not put in prison and killed in punishment for the deed. But kings had great powers in those days. They could condemn a man to death if they would; if it was not done too often, the rest of the world felt to make sure that more heads were not loose on their shoulders, and were too grateful to find them safe to murmur about the fate of other heads, lest a worse thing befall.
Perhaps, when things became too bad, some revengeful man who had been deeply injured would try to meet evil with evil by murdering the king, or by getting up a war against him. In either case, many innocent men had to suffer from the evils that grew out of it.
But one day a better way was found. Louis of Daneshold was now a grave, broadshouldered, powerful man. The Crusades had knit together the knights and barons of England into a close brotherhood, and for the king to harm one was likely to arouse the wrath of all. The young men who had faced the Saracens and fought shoulder to shoulder in Palestine were now in England the men of mark, whose words had to be listened to and heeded by all who would keep out of trouble. Hotheaded John was not one to put a check on his tongue when it would be wise to do so, and hardly was Richard buried when John found himself at odds with Louis and his comrades. They would not submit to his evil doings as king. They would not permit him to take for his own use the lands, cattle, money which they had earned by hard fighting. And finally, when he had a war of his own on his hands in Flanders, fighting French nobles, the English lords flatly refused to follow him across the water, since they had neither love for him as a king nor confidence in him as a leader; and as to the war itself it was king against baron, and they sided with the baron. As a consequence, John came back to England again, well beaten; and he did not love those barons!
For a time after his return he tried to smooth things over and bring back the old way of kingly rule once more. But those stern-eyed men, clad in steel, had tasted freedom. They knew their own strength now. Was it likely that Louis of Daneshold, with the blood of Norse ancestors in his veins, and those Crusader comrades of his, every whit as sturdy fighters, would hold in great respect a tricky king, a murderer of little boys, a man who could not lead to victory in his own battle? No! a thousand times no! And iron clanged on iron when word from the King was brought to the nobles as they camped at London. Down came the mailed hand of many a knight with a resounding blow.
"No compromise! no treaty, save on our own terms!" was their warcry, and what those terms were, John Lackland of England was soon to know. One thousand two hundred and fifteen was the year; twenty-four years after Richard's last Crusade, and his death. The world had been moving fast meanwhile. Freedom was thought more of. The younger men had grown up to be great captains in their turn; and in this year they did a deed which was far reaching, for we feel the effects of it to this day.