1210
To neither of these drawbacks was John altogether indifferent. He was only biding his time to make a great effort for the removal of the first; and although the second appeared, as yet, to have made no difference to his political position, he was not insensible to the dangers which it might involve. He was still playing with both primate and Pope. In the spring of 1210 he had made another feint of renewing negotiations with Stephen Langton, had sent him a safe-conduct for a conference to be held at Dover, and had actually gone thither (May 4), ostensibly for the purpose of meeting him. But the safe-conduct was irregular in form; and this circumstance, coupled with a warning from some English barons, made Stephen refuse to trust himself in John’s power.[711] The king vented his wrath by cutting down the woods on all the archbishop’s manors.[712] On his return from Ireland he dealt a heavy blow at the religious orders. Towards the end of October he called together in London the heads of all the religious houses in England, and compelled them to give him sums of money, of which the total is said to have amounted to one hundred thousand pounds.[713] The Cistercians, whom he had spared in the earlier days of the Interdict, had to bear the brunt of his exactions now; they “were forced to find him chariots with horses and men,”[714] or, as another writer explains it, their privileges were quashed, and they had to give the king forty thousand pounds;[715] moreover, their abbots were forbidden to attend the triennial chapter of the order at Cîteaux, “lest their piteous complaints should exasperate the whole world against such an oppressor.”[716]
1211
In June or July 1211[717] the cardinal subdeacon Pandulf, who was much in the Pope’s confidence, and a Templar named Durand came to England “that they might restore peace between the Crown and the clergy.”[718] They seem to have been sent at the king’s request. The terms of the commission which they had received from the Pope are known from a reissue of it two years later. They were to exhort John to make satisfaction “according to a form subscribed between ourself” (the Pope) “and his envoys.” If he would publicly take an oath of absolute obedience to the Pope’s mandates on all matters for which he was under excommunication, they were to give him absolution; and when they had obtained from him security for the reinstatement of the archbishop of Canterbury, they were to withdraw the interdict.[719] John met them on his return from Wales, at Northampton, on August 30,[720] and received them publicly in a great assembly of the barons. The details of the conference rest only upon the authority of two comparatively late monastic chronicles; but there is no reason for doubting the correctness of the main outlines of their story. The envoys called upon John to make satisfaction to the Church, restore the property which he had taken from her ministers, and receive Archbishop Stephen, the exiled bishops, their kinsfolk and their friends “fairly and in peace.” The king answered that they might make him swear to restore everything, and he would do whatever else they liked, “but if that fellow Stephen sets foot in my land, I will have him hanged.” A discussion followed as to the circumstances of Stephen’s election and the respective rights of Pope and King in such matters. John ended by offering to receive as archbishop any one whom the Pope might choose except Stephen, and to give Stephen another see if he would resign all claims upon Canterbury. Pandulf scornfully rejected this proposal. At last, in presence of the whole council, he pronounced to John’s face the papal sentence of excommunication, of which, he said, the publication had only been delayed till his own arrival in England and that of his colleagues; he absolved all John’s subjects from their allegiance, bade them be ready to join the ranks and obey the leader of any host which the Pope might send to England, and denounced not only John himself, but also all his posterity, as for ever incapacitated for the office of king. It is said that on this John bade the sheriffs and foresters who were present bring in whatever prisoners they had in their charge, and gave orders for the hanging of some and the blinding or mutilation of others, to show the papal envoys his own absolute power and his ruthlessness in the exercise of it; that among the prisoners was a clerk charged with forgery, whom he ordered to be hanged; that Pandulf wanted to excommunicate at once any one who should lay hands on this man, and went out of the hall to fetch a candle for the purpose, but that the king followed him and gave up the accused clerk “to his judgement”—which of course meant, to be set at liberty.[721] Whether or not the mock tragedy enacted between king and cardinal really ended in this strange fashion, the result of the conference was clearly the same as that of all previous diplomacy between Innocent III. and John: the Pope gained nothing and the king lost nothing. Pandulf and Durand went back to Rome accompanied by envoys from John;[722] an order was issued for the recall of the exiles, but it seems to have taken the form of a writ bidding all bishops and beneficed clergy return before next mid-summer, “on pain of losing their property.”[723] The excommunicate sovereign kept his Christmas feast at Windsor,[724] and found a new triumph awaiting him at the opening of the new year.
1212
King William of Scotland, stricken in years and with no male heir save one young son, the child of his old age, was hard pressed by a party in his realm who rallied round a certain Cuthred MacWilliam, a descendant of the older line of Scottish kings which the house of Malcolm and Margaret had ousted from the succession. In despair of overcoming these rebels, William turned to England for succour, and early in 1212 “committed himself, his kingdom and his son to the care” of his English overlord.[725] Before Ash Wednesday (February 7) he had formally granted to John the right to dispose of young Alexander in marriage, “as his liegeman,” within six years from that date.[726] On Mid-Lent Sunday, March 4, the boy was knighted by John, “as the king held a festival in the Hospital of S. Bridget at Clerkenwell.”[727] Later in the year an English army marched to William’s aid. John himself probably led his troops as far as Hexham, where he was on June 27,[728] and then sent them on to Scotland with instructions which proved sufficient to secure the object of their expedition. They scoured the country till Cuthred fell into their power; and the struggle of the old Scottish royal house against the “modern kings” ended, for a time at least, with the hanging of its champion by English hands.[729]
1211
Meanwhile, John had never lost sight of his plans for a renewal of the war with France. The first need of course was money. It was probably in the hope of finding some additional sources of revenue which could be claimed for the Crown that on his return from Ireland he ordered an inquiry into all assizes of novel disseisin which had been held during his absence, and also into the right of presentation to, and actual tenancy of, all ecclesiastical benefices throughout the country.[730] An inquest into the services due from the knights and other tenants-in-chief in every shire was ordered in the same year or early in the next;[731] and an inquest concerning escheated honours and the services due from them was set on foot shortly afterwards.[732] In 1211 “the king of France seized all the English ships that touched his shores, and therefore”—says the Dunstable annalist—“the king of England seized many men of the Cinque Ports”;[733] a statement which we can only suppose to mean one of two things: either that John suspected some of the ships to have been willing prizes, or that he was dissatisfied with the way in which his sailors had executed, or failed to execute, some order which he had given for retaliation. In either case, however, it is clear that he made his displeasure a ground for further exactions from the leading men of the southern coast towns.
1197–1209
Of far greater moment than the desultory skirmishes between the sailors of England and France was the scheme of European coalition against Philip which John had been gradually building up during the past ten years. One of the most important elements in his political calculations throughout those years was the course of events in Germany. The death of the Emperor Henry VI. in September 1197 had been followed by a disputed election to the imperial crown, the late Emperor’s brother, Philip of Suabia, claiming it for himself against the candidate chosen by the majority of the electors, Otto of Saxony, a son of Duke Henry the Lion and Maud, daughter of Henry II. of England.[734] The Suabian prince was backed by his powerful family connexions, including the duke of Austria, son and successor of Richard Cœur-de-Lion’s old enemy Leopold. Otto’s youth had been passed in exile at the court of his Angevin grandfather, and he was a special favourite of his uncle Richard, who granted him first the earldom of York and afterwards the county of Poitou, and whose influence with some of the princes of the empire had had a share in procuring him their votes. It was, therefore, obvious policy for his rival and the king of France to make common cause against him and his kinsman of England. A treaty of alliance between the two Philips was signed on June 29, 1198.[735] In 1200 Otto sent his two brothers to demand for him from John a renewal of the investiture of York and of Poitou, and also—if we may believe Roger of Howden—two-thirds of Richard’s treasure and all his jewels, which he said Richard had bequeathed to him. His assertion was correct with regard to the jewels, but the other claims are so unreasonable that it is difficult to believe that they can have had any justification.[736] John, however, had an answer ready for all these demands. The envoys did not reach him till after the treaty of Gouleton (May 1200) was signed, and by that treaty he was pledged to give no help of any kind to Otto without the consent of the French king.[737] This excuse, indeed, was only temporary; in June 1201 the Pope recognized Otto as lawful emperor-elect;[738] and though John was at that very moment renewing his treaty with France, the uncle and nephew speedily drew together. Throughout the vicissitudes of the next six years John never lost sight of the community of their interests; he constantly showed his sense of it by letters and presents, by loans and gifts of money, and by grants of trading and other privileges in England to the German and Flemish cities which supported Otto,[739] as well as by undertaking the custody of at least one prisoner of importance who belonged to the party of Otto’s rival.[740] Otto, whose fortunes were gradually rising throughout these years, was so fully alive to the value of the English alliance that in May 1207 he came to London for a personal interview with John. It is said that on this occasion Otto promised to conquer the realm of France and make it over to his uncle, all except three cities, Paris, Etampes and Orléans, which Philip Augustus had once jestingly said he would bestow upon Otto himself if ever the latter became emperor. John gave his nephew six thousand marks,[741] and received from him the symbolical gift of a great golden crown.[742] As yet, indeed, Otto was only emperor-elect, and had the conquest of his own realms to complete ere he could attempt that of France. But his fortunes were steadily rising; his rival, Philip of Suabia, was slain in the following summer;[743] and on October 4, 1209, just at the moment of his uncle’s triumph over the English Church, he was crowned by the Pope at Rome.[744]