6. The Election of Stephen Langton to the Archbishopric of Canterbury. 1205.—In England John had caused much discontent by the heavy taxation which he imposed, not with the regularity of Henry II. and Hubert Walter, but with unfair inequality. In 1205 Archbishop Hubert Walter died. The right of choosing a new archbishop lay with the monks of the monastery of Christchurch at Canterbury, of which every archbishop, as the successor of St. Augustine, was the abbot. This right, however, had long been exercised only according to the wish of the king, who practically named the archbishop. This time the monks, without asking John's leave, hurriedly chose their sub-prior Reginald, and sent him off with a party of monks to Rome, to obtain the sanction of the Pope. Reginald was directed to say nothing of his election till he reached Rome; but he was a vain man, and had no sooner reached the Continent than he babbled about his own dignity as an archbishop. When John heard this he bade the monks choose the Bishop of Norwich, John de Grey, the king's treasurer; and the monks, thoroughly frightened, chose him as if they had not already made their election. John had, however, forgotten to consult the bishops of the province of Canterbury, who had always been consulted by his father and brother, and they too sent messengers to the Pope to complain of the king.

8. John's Quarrel with the Church. 1206—1208.—The choice of an archbishop in opposition to the king was undoubtedly something new. The archbishopric of Canterbury was a great national office, and a king as skilful as Henry II. would probably have succeeded in refusing to allow it to be disposed of by the Pope and a small party of monks. John was unworthy to be the champion of any cause whatever. In 1207, after an angry correspondence with Innocent, he drove the monks of Christchurch out of the kingdom. Innocent in reply threatened England with an interdict, and in the spring of 1208 the interdict was published.

10. John Excommunicated. 1209.—In 1209 Innocent excommunicated John himself. John cared nothing for being excluded from the services of the Church, but he knew that if the excommunication were published in England few would venture to sit at table with him, or even to speak with him. For some time he kept it out of the country, but it became known that it had been pronounced at Rome, and even his own dependents began to avoid his company. He feared lest the barons whom he had wearied with heavy fines and taxes might turn against him, and he needed large sums of money to defend himself against them. First he turned on the Jews, threw them into prison, and after torturing those who refused to pay, wrung from them 40,000l. The abbots were next summoned before him and forced by threats to pay 100,000l. Besides this the wealthy Cistercians had to pay an additional fine, the amount of which is uncertain, but of which the lowest estimate is 27,000l. In 1211 some of the barons declared against John, but they were driven from the country, and those who remained were harshly treated. Some of their sons who had been taken as hostages were hanged or starved to death.

11. The Pope threatens John with Deposition. 1212—1213.—In 1212 Innocent's patience came to an end, and he announced that he would depose John if he still refused to give way, and would transfer his crown to his old enemy, Philip II. The English clergy and barons were not likely to oppose the change. Philip gathered a great army in France to make good the claim which he expected Innocent to give him. John, indeed, was not entirely without resource. The Emperor Otto IV. was John's sister's son, and as he too had been excommunicated by Innocent he made common cause with John against Philip. Early in 1213 John gathered an army of 60,000 men to resist Philip's landing, and if Otto with his Germans were to attack France from the east, a French army would hardly venture to cross into England, unless indeed it had no serious resistance to fear. John, however, knew well that he could not depend on his own army. Many men in the host hated him bitterly, and he feared deposition, and perhaps death, at the hands of those whom he had summoned to his help.

13. The Resistance of the Barons and Clergy. 1213.—At first John seemed to have gained all that he wanted by submission. Pandulf bade Philip abandon all thought of invading England, and when Philip refused to obey, John's fleet fell upon the French fleet off the coast of Flanders and destroyed it. John even proposed to land with an army in Poitou and to reconquer Normandy and Anjou. His subjects thought that he ought to begin by fulfilling his engagements to them. John having received absolution, summoned four men from each county to meet at St. Albans to assess the damages of the clergy which he had bound himself to make good. The meeting thus summoned was the germ of the future House of Commons. It was not a national political assembly, but it was a national jury gathered together into one place. The exiled barons were recalled, and John now hoped that his vassals would follow him to Poitou. They refused to do so, alleging their poverty and the fact that they had already fulfilled their feudal obligation of forty days' service by attending him at Dover. They had, in fact, no interest in regaining Normandy and Anjou for John. Though the English barons still spoke French, and were proud of their Norman descent, they now thought of themselves as Englishmen and cared for England alone. John turned furiously on the barons, and was only hindered from attacking them by the new Archbishop, who threatened to excommunicate everyone who took arms against them. It was time for all Englishmen who loved order and law to resist John. Stephen Langton put himself at the head of the movement, and at a great assembly at St. Paul's produced a charter of Henry I., by which that king had promised to put an end to the tyranny of the Red King, and declared amidst general applause that it must be renewed by John. It was a memorable scene. Up to this time it had been necessary for the clergy and the people to support the king against the tyranny of the barons. Now the clergy and people offered their support to the barons against the tyranny of the king. John had merely the Pope on his side. Innocent's view of the situation was very simple. John was to obey the Pope, and all John's subjects were to obey John. A Papal legate arrived in England, fixed the sum which John was to pay to the clergy, and refused to listen to the complaints of those who thought themselves defrauded.

15. The Struggle between John and the Barons. 1214—1215. When John returned he called upon all his vassals who had remained at home to pay an exorbitant scutage. In reply they met at Bury St. Edmunds. The charter of Henry I., which had been produced at St. Paul's the year before, was again read, and all present swore to force John to accept it as the rule of his own government. John asked for delay, and attempted to divide his antagonists by offering to the clergy the right of free election to bishoprics and abbacies. Then he turned against the barons. Early in 1215 he brought over a large force of foreign mercenaries, and persuaded the Pope to threaten the barons with excommunication. His attempt was defeated by the constancy of Stephen Langton. The demands of the barons were placed in writing by the archbishop, and, on John's refusal to accept them, an army was formed to force them on the king. The army of God and the Holy Church, as it was called, grew rapidly. London admitted it within its walls, and the accession of London to the cause of the barons was a sign that the traders of England were of one mind with the barons and the clergy. John found that their force was superior to his own, and at Runnimede on June 15, 1215, confirmed with his hand and seal the articles of the barons, with the full intention of breaking his engagement as soon as he should be strong enough to do so.

(a) Its Concessions.—The Church was to be free, its privileges were to be respected, and its right to free elections which John had granted earlier in the year was not to be infringed on. As for the laity, the tenants-in-chief were to pay only fixed reliefs when they entered on their estates. Heirs under age were to be the king's wards, but the king was to treat them fairly, and do nothing to injure their land whilst it was in his hands. The king might continue to find husbands for heiresses and wives for heirs, but only amongst those of their own class. The tenants-in-chief again were bound to pay aids to the king when he needed ransom from imprisonment, or money to enable him to bear the expenses of knighting his eldest son or of marrying his eldest daughter. For all other purposes the king could only demand supplies from his tenants-in-chief with the consent of the Common Council of the realm. As only the tenants-in-chief were concerned, this Common Council was the Great Council of tenants-in-chief, such as had met under the Norman and Angevin kings. A fresh attempt, however, was made to induce the smaller tenants-in-chief to attend, in addition to the bishops, abbots, and barons, by a direction that whilst these were to be summoned personally, the sheriffs should in each county issue a general summons to the smaller tenants-in-chief. Though the sub-tenants had no part in the Common Council of the realm, they were relieved by a direction that they should pay no more aids to their lords than their lords paid to the king, and by a general declaration that all that had been granted to their lords by the king should be allowed by their lords to them. The Londoners and other townsmen had their privileges assured to them; and all freemen were secured against heavy and irregular penalties if they committed an offence.

(b) Its Securities.—Such were the provisions of this truly national act, which Englishmen were for ages engaged in maintaining and developing. The immediate question was how to secure what had been gained. The first thing necessary for this purpose was to make the courts of law the arbitrators between the king and his subjects. In a series of articles it was declared that the sworn testimony of a man's peers should be used whenever fines or penalties were imposed, and this insistence on the employment of the jury system as it then existed was emphasised by the strong words to which John placed his seal: "No freeman may be taken, or imprisoned, or disseised, or outlawed, or banished, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go against him, or send against him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land. To none will we sell or deny or delay right or justice." It was a good security if it could be maintained, but it would avail nothing against a king who was willing and able to use force to set up the old tyranny once more. In the first place John must dismiss all his foreign mercenaries. So little, however, was John trusted that it was thought necessary in the second place to establish a body of twenty-five—twenty-four barons and the Mayor of London—which was to guard against any attempt of the king to break his word. If John infringed upon any of the articles of the Charter the twenty-five, with the assistance of the whole community of the kingdom, had the right of distraining upon the king's lands till enough was obtained to make up the loss to the person who had suffered wrong. In other words, there was to be a permanent organisation for making war upon the king.

18. Conflict between Louis and John. 1216.—John, in spite of his success, found himself without sufficient money to pay his mercenaries, and he therefore retreated to Winchester. Louis entered London in triumph, and afterwards drove John out of Winchester. Innocent indeed excommunicated Louis, but no one took heed of the excommunication. Yet John was not without support. The trading towns of the East, who probably regarded Louis as a foreigner, took his part, and many of his old officials, to whom the victory of the barons seemed likely to bring back the anarchy of Stephen's time, clung to him. One of these, a high-spirited and strong-willed man, Hubert de Burgh, held out for John in Dover Castle. John kept the field and even won some successes. As he was crossing the Wash the tide rose rapidly and swept away his baggage. He himself escaped with difficulty. Worn out in mind and body, he was carried on a litter to Newark, where on October 19, 1216, he died.[Back to Contents]

2. The Renewal of the Great Charter. 1216—1217.—The principles on which William the Marshal intended to govern were signified by the changes made in the Great Charter when it was renewed on the king's accession in 1216, and again on Louis's expulsion in 1217. Most of the clauses binding the king to avoid oppression were allowed to stand; but those which prohibited the raising of new taxation without the authority of the Great Council, and the stipulation which established a body of twenty-five to distrain on John's property in case of the breach of the Charter, were omitted. Probably it was thought that there was less danger from Henry than there had been from John; but the acceptance of the compromise was mainly due to the feeling that, whilst it was desirable that the king should govern with moderation, it would be a dangerous experiment to put the power to control him in the hands of the barons, who might use it for their own advantage rather than for the advantage of the nation. The whole history of England for many years was to turn on the difficulty of weakening the power of a bad king without producing anarchy.

3. Administration of Hubert de Burgh. 1219-1232.—In 1219 William the Marshal died. For some years the government was mainly in the hands of Hubert de Burgh, who strenuously maintained the authority of the king over the barons, whilst at the same time he set himself distinctly at the head of the growing national feeling against the admission of foreigners to wealth and high position in England. As a result of the disturbances of John's reign many of the barons and of the leaders of the mercenaries had either fortified their own castles or had taken possession of those which belonged to the king. In 1220 Hubert demanded the surrender of these castles as Henry II. had done in the beginning of his reign. In 1221 the Earl of Aumale was forced to surrender his castles, and in 1224 Faukes de Breauté, one of the leaders of John's mercenaries who had received broad lands in England, was reduced to submission and was banished on his refusal to give up his great castle at Bedford. As long as Hubert ruled, England was to belong to the English. His power was endangered from the very quarter from which it ought to have received most support. In 1227 Henry declared himself of age. He was weak and untrustworthy, always ready to give his confidence to unworthy favourites. His present favourite was Peter des Roches, Bishop of Winchester. The bishop was a greedy and unscrupulous Poitevin, who regarded the king's favour as a means of enriching himself and his Poitevin relatives and friends. Henry was always short of money, and was persuaded by Peter that it was Hubert's fault. In 1232 Hubert was charged with a whole string of crimes and dismissed from office.

4. Administration of Peter des Roches. 1232-1234.—Henry was now entirely under the power of Peter des Roches. In 1233 he ordered Hubert to be seized. Though Hubert took sanctuary in a chapel, he was dragged out, and a smith was ordered to put him in fetters. The man refused to obey. "Is not this," he said, "that most faithful and high-souled Hubert who has so often saved England from the ravages of foreigners, and has given England back to the English?" Hubert was thrown into the Tower, and was never again employed in any office of state. As long as Peter des Roches ruled the king it would be hard to keep England for the English. Poitevins and Bretons flocked over from the Continent, and were appointed to all the influential posts which fell vacant. The barons had the national feeling behind them when they raised complaints against this policy. Their leader was Earl Richard the Marshal, the son of the Earl William who had governed England after the death of John. Without even the semblance of trial Henry declared Earl Richard and his chief supporters guilty of treason. At a Great Council held at Westminster some of the barons remonstrated. Peter des Roches replied saucily that there were no peers in England as in France, meaning that in England the barons had no rights against the king. Both Henry and Peter could, however, use their tongues better than their swords. They failed miserably in an attempt to overcome the men whom they had unjustly accused, till in 1234 Peter stirred up some of the English lords in Ireland to seize on Earl Richard's possessions there. The Earl hurried over to defend his estates. Amongst his followers were many of Peter's confidants, who, treacherously deserting him in the first battle, left him to be slain by his enemies. Peter at least gained nothing by his villainy. Edmund Rich, a saintly man, who had recently become Archbishop of Canterbury, protested against his misdeeds. All England was behind the Archbishop, and Henry was compelled to dismiss Peter and then to welcome back Peter's enemies and to restore them to their rights. It was of no slight importance that a man so devoted and unselfish as Edmund Rich had put himself at the head of the movement. It was a good thing, no doubt, to maintain that wealth should be in the hands rather of natives than of foreigners; but after all every contention for material wealth alone is of the earth, earthy. No object which appeals exclusively to the selfish instincts can, in the long run, be worth contending for. Edmund Rich's accession to the national cause was a guarantee that the claims of righteousness and mercy in the management of the national government would not altogether be forgotten, and fortunately there were new forces actively at work in the same direction. The friars, the followers of St. Francis and St. Dominic, had made good their footing in England.

6. St. Dominic.—Another order arose about the same time in Spain. Dominic, a Spaniard, was appalled, not by the misery, but by the ignorance of mankind. The order which he instituted was to be called that of the Friars Preachers, though they have in later times usually been known as Dominicans. Like the Franciscans they were to be Friars, or brothers, because all teaching is vain, as much as all charitable acts are vain, unless brotherly kindness be at the root. Like the Franciscans they were to be mendicants, because so only could the world be convinced that they sought not their own good, but to win souls to Christ.

7. The Coming of the Friars. 1220-1224.—In 1220 the first Dominicans arrived in England. Four years later, in 1224, the first Franciscans followed them. Of the work of the early Dominicans in England little is known. They preached and taught, appealing to those whose intelligence was keen enough to appreciate the value of argument. The Franciscans had a different work before them. The misery of the dwellers on the outskirts of English towns was appalling. The townsmen had made provision for keeping good order amongst all who shared in the liberties,[13] or, as we should say, in the privileges of the town; but they made no provision for good order amongst the crowds who flocked to the town to pick up a scanty living as best they might. These poor wretches had to dwell in miserable hovels outside the walls by the side of fetid ditches into which the filth of the town was poured. Disease and starvation thinned their numbers. No man cared for their bodies or their souls. The priests who served in the churches within the town passed them by, nor had they any place in the charities with which the brethren of the gilds assuaged the misfortunes of their own members. It was amongst these that the Franciscans lived and laboured, sharing in their misery and their diseases, counting their lives well spent if they could bring comfort to a single human soul.

8. Monks and Friars.—The work of the friars was a new phase in the history of the Church. The monks had made it their object to save their own souls; the friars made it their object to save the bodies and souls of others. The friars, like the monks, taught by the example of self-denial; but the friars added active well-doing to the passive virtue of restraint. Such examples could not fail to be attended with consequences of which those who set them never dreamed, all the more because the two new orders worked harmoniously towards a common end. The Dominicans quickened the brain whilst the Franciscans touched the heart, and the whole nation was the better in consequence.

10. The Early Career of Simon de Montfort. 1231—1243.—Strangely enough, Simon de Montfort, the man who was to be the chief opponent of Henry and his foreign favourites, was himself a foreigner. He was sprung from a family established in Normandy, and his father, the elder Simon de Montfort, had been the leader of a body of Crusaders from the north of France, who had poured over the south to crush a vast body of heretics, known by the name of Albigeois, from Albi, a town in which they swarmed. The elder Simon had been strict in his orthodoxy and unsparing in his cruelty to all who were unorthodox. From him the younger Simon inherited his unswerving religious zeal and his constancy of purpose. There was the same stern resolution in both, but in the younger man these qualities were coupled with a statesmanlike instinct, which was wanting to the father. Norman as he was, he had a claim to the earldom of Leicester through his grandmother, and in 1231 this claim was acknowledged by Henry. For some time Simon continued to live abroad, but in 1236 he returned to England to be present at the king's marriage. He was at once taken into favour, and in 1238 married the king's sister, Eleanor. His marriage was received by the barons and the people with a burst of indignation. It was one more instance, it was said, of Henry's preference for foreigners over his own countrymen. In 1239 Henry turned upon his brother-in-law, brought heavy charges against him, and drove him from his court. In 1240 Simon was outwardly reconciled to Henry, but he was never again able to repose confidence in one so fickle. In 1242 Henry resolved to undertake an expedition to France to recover Poitou, which had been gradually slipping out of his hands. At a Great Council held before he sailed, the barons, who had no sympathy with any attempt to recover lost possessions in France, not only rated him soundly for his folly, but, for the first time, absolutely refused to make him a grant of money. Simon told him to his face that the Frenchman was no lamb to be easily subdued. Simon's words proved true. Henry sailed for France, but in 1243 he surrendered all claims to Poitou, and returned discomfited. If he did not bring home victory he brought with him a new crowd of Poitevins, who were connected with his mother's second husband. All of them expected to receive advancement in England, and they seldom expected it in vain.

12. A Weak Parliamentary Opposition. 1244.—Against these evils the Great Council strove in vain to make head. It was now beginning to be known as Parliament, though no alteration was yet made in its composition. In 1244 clergy and barons joined in remonstrating with the king, and some of them even talked about restraining his power by the establishment of a Justiciar and Chancellor, together with four councillors, all six to be elected by the whole of the baronage. Without the consent of the Chancellor thus chosen no administrative act could be done. The scheme was a distinct advance upon that of the barons who, in 1215, forced the Great Charter upon John. The barons had then proposed to leave the appointment of executive officials to the king, and to appoint a committee of twenty-five, who were to have nothing to do with the government of the country, but were to compel the king by force to keep the promises which he had made. In 1244 they proposed to appoint the executive officials themselves. It was the beginning of a series of changes which ultimately led to that with which we are now familiar, the appointment of ministers responsible to Parliament. It was too great an innovation to be accepted at once, especially as it was demanded by the barons alone. The clergy, who were still afraid of the disorders which might ensue if power were lodged in the hands of the barons, refused to support it, and for a time it fell to the ground. At the same time Richard of Cornwall abandoned the baronial party. He had lately married the queen's sister, which may have drawn him over to the king; but it is also probable that his own position as the king's brother made him unwilling to consent to a scheme which would practically transfer the government from the king to the barons. On the other hand Earl Simon was found on the side of the barons. He held his earldom by inheritance from his English grandmother, and the barons were willing to forgive his descent from a foreign grandfather when they found him prepared to share their policy.

13. Growing Discontent. 1244—1254.—The clergy had to learn by bitter experience that it was only by a close alliance with the barons that they could preserve themselves from wrong. In 1244 a new envoy from the Pope, Master Martin, travelled over England wringing money from the clergy. Though he was driven out of the country in 1245, the Papal exactions did not cease. The Pope, moreover, continued to present his own nominees to English benefices, and in 1252 Grossetête complained that these nominees drew three times as much income from England as flowed into the royal exchequer. For a time even Henry made complaints, but in 1254 Innocent IV. won him over to his side. Frederick II. had died in 1250, and his illegitimate son, Manfred, a tried warrior and an able ruler, had succeeded him as king of Sicily and Naples. Innocent could not bear that that crown should be worn by the son of the man whom he had hated bitterly, and offered it to Edmund, the second son of Henry III. Henry lept at the offer, hoping that England would bear the expense of the undertaking. England was, however, in no mood to comply. Henry had been squandering money for years. He had recently employed Earl Simon in Gascony, where Simon had put down the resistance of the nobles with a heavy hand. The Gascons complained to Henry, and Henry quarrelled with Simon more bitterly than before. In 1254 Henry crossed the sea to restore order in person. To meet his expenses he borrowed a vast sum of money, and this loan, which he expected England to meet, was the only result of the expedition.

15. Fresh Exactions. 1254-1257.—At the end of 1254 Henry returned to England. In 1255 a new Pope, Alexander IV., confirmed his predecessor's grant of the kingdom of Sicily to Edmund, on condition that Henry should give a large sum of money for the expenses of a war against Manfred. To make it easy for Henry to find the money, Alexander gave him a tenth of the revenues of the English clergy, on the plea that the clergy had always borne their share of the expenses of a crusade, and that to fight for the Pope against Manfred was equivalent to a crusade. Immense sums were wrung from the clergy, who were powerless to resist Pope and king combined. Their indignation was the greater, not only because they knew that religion was not at stake in the Pope's effort to secure his political power in Italy, but also because the Papal court was known to be hopelessly corrupt, it being a matter of common talk that all things were for sale at Rome. The clergy indeed were less than ever in a condition to resist the king without support. Grossetête was dead, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, the queen's uncle, Boniface of Savoy, whose duty it was to maintain the rights of the Church, was a man who cared nothing for England except on account of the money he drew from it. Other bishoprics as well were held by foreigners. The result of the weakness of the clergy was that they were now ready to unite with the barons, whom they had deserted in 1244 (see p. 195). Henry's misgovernment, in fact, had roused all classes against him, as the townsmen and the smaller landowners had been even worse treated than the greater barons. In 1257 one obstacle to reform was removed. Richard of Cornwall, the king's brother, who was formidable through his wealth and the numbers of his vassals, had for some time taken part against them. In 1257 he was chosen king of the Romans by the German electors, an election which would make him Emperor as soon as he had been crowned by the Pope. He at once left England to seek his fortunes in Germany, where he was well received as long as he had money to reward his followers, but was deserted as soon as his purse was empty.