John Lackland

by Kate Norgate

But the first check to Philip’s enterprise was to come from another quarter. Even if we could perceive no outward indication of the Pope’s motives in giving his commission to the French king, we should still find it hard to believe that so far-seeing a statesman as Innocent III. seriously contemplated with approval the prospect of a French conquest of England. At the moment, indeed, France was the most efficient political instrument of the Papacy; but it could scarcely be a part of the papal policy to give her such an overwhelming predominance as she would have acquired by the annexation of England to her crown. England, no less than France, had her place in the European political system, of which Innocent looked upon himself as the director and the guardian; and the extinction of England as an independent state would have destroyed the balance of powers which it was a special function of the Papacy to maintain with the utmost care, and whose preservation was of great importance to Innocent for carrying into effect his own political designs. There can hardly be a reasonable doubt that he made use of Philip’s ambition for a purpose of his own, a purpose which was really the direct opposite of that which Philip had in view—the purpose, not of crushing England, but of winning her back to the Roman alliance, and thus securing her as a counterpoise, in case of need, to the power of Philip himself.[795] In a word, Innocent and John had simultaneously recognized the fact that, in the interest of both alike, the time for their reconciliation had come.

John, as we have seen, had paved the way by offering, at the close of 1212, his acceptance of the terms proposed by the Pope in 1211. Innocent’s reply to this offer was written on February 27, 1213. Although, he said, he considered himself no longer bound by his own terms, since the king had rejected them, yet for the sake of peace he was willing to abide by the form of agreement thus again proposed, if before June 1 the king would, by an oath sworn in his presence by four barons, and by letters patent addressed to the archbishop of Canterbury and the other exiled bishops, promise to keep it faithfully and fulfil it effectually, “according to the expositions and explanations which we have thought good to be set forth for the removal of all scruple and doubt.” In May, when all England was expecting the attack of Philip Augustus, three of John’s messengers brought back from Rome this letter, together with a copy of the form originally committed to Pandulf and Durand, and the “expositions and explanations” of the arrangements now required on both sides to insure its execution.[796] All these documents seem to have been communicated to Pandulf in a private interview which he had with the Pope on the eve of his departure from Rome in January;[797] at any rate he was well aware of their contents and fully instructed how to act in consequence. Just as the French fleet was ready to sail, he in the Pope’s name forbade all further proceedings against England till he should have once more appealed to John and learned whether he would yet repent.[798] Close upon the return of the English envoys from Rome followed two Templars, who landed at Dover with a message from Pandulf to the king, requesting an interview. It took place at Dover on May 13. In presence of king and legate, the earls of Salisbury, Warren, and Ferrars and the count of Boulogne swore in John’s behalf the oath of security required by Innocent; and on the same day John published by letters patent the agreement concluded between himself and Pandulf in the form which the Pope had prescribed.[799]

Two days later—on Wednesday, May 15—king and legate met again, “with the great men of the realm,” in the house of the Knights Templars at Ewell, near Dover. There, by a charter attested by himself, the archbishop of Dublin, the chief justiciars of England and Ireland, seven earls (of whom the Marshal was one), and three barons, the king “granted and freely surrendered to God and His holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and to the Holy Mother Church of Rome, and to Pope Innocent and his Catholic successors,” the whole realm of England and “the whole realm of Ireland,” with all rights thereunto appertaining, to receive them back and hold them thenceforth as a feudatary of God and the Roman Church. He swore fealty to the Pope for both realms in Pandulf’s presence, promised to perform liege homage to the Pope in person if he should ever have an opportunity of so doing, and pledged all his successors to a like engagement, besides undertaking to furnish the Roman see with a yearly sum of one thousand marks—seven hundred for England and three hundred for Ireland.[800]

One English chronicler says that John, in performing this homage, acted “according to what had been decreed at Rome.”[801] Another, not less generally accurate and well informed, says that John “added it of his own accord” to the agreement already completed.[802] On the whole, it is probable that this latter account of the matter is the correct one, at least thus far, that the scheme originated not at Rome, but in England. Not much weight can indeed be attached to the king’s own assertion, made in the charter of homage itself, that the act was a voluntary one, which he had done by way of penance and humiliation for his offences, “not urged by force nor compelled by fear, but of our own good free will and by the common counsel of our barons”;[803] nor is the accuracy of this version of the transaction proved by the fact that Innocent accepted it without remark in his reply to John’s letters on the subject,[804] and that no extant document emanating from the court of Rome contains the slightest indication that the Pope had ever demanded or suggested any proceeding of the kind. There is, however, no perceptible reason why Innocent should have required of John a penance of so extraordinary a character, nor why, if he did require it, either he or his royal penitent should make a secret of his having done so. On the other hand, John had a very cogent reason for “adding something of his own” to the agreement between himself and Innocent. If he was to give up all for which he had been fighting—and fighting successfully—against the Pope and the Church for the last six years, he must make quite sure of gaining such an advantage as would be worth the sacrifice. Mere release from excommunication and interdict was certainly, in his eyes, not worth any sacrifice at all. To change the Pope from an enemy into a political friend was worth it, but—from John’s point of view—only if the friendship could be made something much more close and indissoluble than the ordinary official relation between the Pope and every Christian sovereign. He must bind the Pope to his personal interest by some special tie of such a nature that the interest of the Papacy itself would prevent Innocent from casting it off or breaking it. For a sovereign of John’s character no additional sacrifice would be involved in the device which he actually employed for this purpose. To outward personal humiliation of any kind John was absolutely indifferent, when there was any advantage to be gained by undergoing it. To any humiliation which the Crown or the nation might suffer in his person, he was indifferent under all circumstances. His plighted faith he had never had a moment’s hesitation in breaking, whether it were sworn to his father, his brother, his allies, or his people, and which he would break with equal facility when sworn to the supreme Pontiff; moreover, he took the precaution of inserting in his charter a saving clause which he could easily have interpreted, had occasion ever arisen, so as to reduce the whole transaction to a mere empty form.[805] There seems, in short, to be good reason for believing that John’s homage to the Pope was offered without any pressure from Rome, and on grounds of deliberate policy.[806]

How far the credit or discredit—whichever it be—of that policy belongs to John is, however, a question not easily solved. Two years later, the English barons seem to have claimed the credit for themselves. We are told that they besought the Pope, “as he was lord of England,” to take their part against John, “since he well knew that they had at his command boldly opposed the king in behalf of the Church’s liberty, and that the king had granted an annual revenue to Rome, and bestowed other honours on the Pope and the Roman Church, not of his own accord, but only out of fear and under compulsion from them.”[807]

This, if correctly reported, is a distinct assertion by the malcontent barons that they had deliberately chosen to set up the Pope as temporal overlord of their country, and that it was pressure from them which had compelled John to do him homage as such. The truth probably lies half-way between this version and that of the king. Whether the “common counsel of the barons” was given spontaneously to John and accepted by him, or whether it was merely a response to a proposal which he had laid before them, there can be little doubt that each party adopted the scheme in the hope of turning it to account against the other party. That on the side of the barons this hope proved utterly delusive, while on the side of John it was completely realized, simply shows once more how far less than a match was the collective sagacity of the barons for the single-handed dexterity of the king.

It was not till many years later that a great historian, who was also a vehement partisan, denounced John’s homage to the Pope as “a thing to be detested for all time.”[808] The Barnwell annalist, writing at the time of the event, tells us indeed that “to many it seemed ignominious, and a heavy yoke of servitude.” But the action of all parties at the moment was a practical acknowledgement of their consciousness that, as the same annalist says, John “by this act provided prudently both for himself and for his people; for matters were in such a strait, and so great was the fear on all sides, that there was no more ready way of evading the imminent peril—perhaps no other way at all. For when once he had put himself under Apostolical protection, and made his realms a part of the patrimony of S. Peter, there was not in the Roman world a sovereign who durst attack him, or invade them; inasmuch as Pope Innocent was universally held in awe above all his predecessors for many years past.”[809]