The moment that he had been crowned, Richard set to work to scrape together every penny that he could procure, in order to provide against the expenses of the forthcoming Crusade. He began by selling every office and dignity that was vacant, with a gross disregard for the interests of the crown and the welfare of his subjects. He took £3000 from William Longchamp, the haughty and quarrelsome Bishop of Ely, and appointed him both Chancellor and Justiciar; that is, he made regent in his absence the most unsuitable man that could have been found. He sold the earldom of Northumberland to Hugh, Bishop of Durham, for £1000. A still greater bargain was obtained by William, King of Scotland, who for the sum of 10,000 marks (£6666) was let off the homage to the crown of England, which Henry II. had imposed upon him after the battle of Alnwick. Richard jestingly said that "he would have sold London itself if he could have found a rich enough buyer." But every town that wanted a charter, every baron who coveted a slice of crown land, every knight who wished to be made a sheriff, obtained the desired object at a cheap rate.

Richard's reign began with an outburst of turbulence which illustrated his careless governance well enough. Among the many classes of subjects to whom his father had given peace and protection was the Jewish colony in England, a body which had been rapidly growing in numbers as England recovered from its ills under Henry's firm hand. The Jews were much hated by their neighbours, partly as rivals in trade of the native merchant, and as usurers who lent money at exorbitant interest, but most of all because of their race and religion. But they had settled under the king's protection, and in return for the heavy tribute which they paid him, obtained security for their life and goods. They were often called the "king's property," because he kept the right of taxing and managing them entirely in his own hands.

At Richard's coronation a deputation of Jewish elders came to bear him a gift. They were set upon by the king's foreign servants and cruelly beaten, in mere fanatical spite. The news spread, and on a false rumour that the king had approved the deed, the London mob rose and sacked the Jews' quarter. Nor was this all; the excitement spread over all England, and at Norwich, Stamford, Lincoln, York, and other places, there were riots in which many Jews were slain. At the last-named city a fearful tragedy occurred; all the Jews of York took refuge in the castle, and when they were beset by a howling mob who cried for their blood, they by common consent slew their wives and children, and then set fire to the castle and burnt themselves, rather than fall into the hands of their enemies. No adequate punishment was ever inflicted for these disgraceful riots; even at York only a fine was imposed on the town.

Richard left England in December, 1189, and, after raising additional forces and stores of money in his continental dominions, sailed from Marseilles for the East. Richard was one of three sovereign princes who engaged in the third Crusade; the other two were the Emperor Frederic Barbarossa and Philip Augustus, King of France. The emperor led the troops of Germany by the land route through Constantinople and Asia Minor, but Richard and Philip had wisely resolved to go by sea. Frederic lost three-fourths of his army in forcing his way through the Turkish sultanate in Asia Minor, and was accidentally drowned himself ere he crossed the borders of Syria. Only a small remnant of the German host ever reached the Holy Land. Richard and Philip fared much better, and gained the Levant in safety, after halting in Sicily for the winter of 1190-91. It was during their stay at Messina that the two kings became bitter personal enemies; in his father's time Richard had been the friend of the French, and he did not realize for some time the fact that in succeeding to Henry's dominions he had also succeeded to the jealous hatred which Philip nourished for his over-great vassal, the Duke of Aquitaine and Normandy. But in Sicily Richard detected the French king plotting and intriguing against him, and for the future regarded him as a secret enemy, and viewed all his acts with suspicion.

If we were relating the personal acts of Richard rather than the history of England, there would be much to tell of his feats in the East. He began by subduing the isle of Cyprus, whose ruler, Isaac Comnenus—a rebel against the Emperor of Constantinople—had ill-treated the shipwrecked crews of some English vessels. After conquering the whole island, he took formal possession of it, and with great pomp married there his affianced bride, Berengaria of Navarre, who had come out from Europe to join him. He then sailed for the Holy Land, and landed near Acre, in the centre of the seat of war.

Acre was at this moment beset by those of the Crusaders who had arrived before Richard. But their camp was itself being besieged by a great Saracen host under Sultan Saladin, who had raised all the levies of Syria, Mesopotamia, and Egypt, to relieve the beleaguered city. The landing of the hosts of England and France soon turned the tide of war, and ere long Acre fell. Richard earned and obtained the whole credit of the success by his energy and courage, while his rival Philip, by his jealous bickering with the English, merited a name for disloyalty and lukewarm zeal. It must be confessed that Richard won himself many enemies by his haughtiness and hasty temper; not only did he quarrel with Philip, but he mortally offended Leopold of Babenberg, the Duke of Austria. The German had planted his banner upon the walls of Acre as if he had taken the town himself, and Richard had it hewn down and cast into the ditch.

Less than three weeks after Acre fell, the King of France suddenly announced his intention of returning home, though nothing had yet been done to defeat Saladin or recapture Jerusalem. He left part of his army behind him under the Duke of Burgundy, and sailed off, after making a vain promise that he would not molest Richard's dominions so long as he was at the Crusade.

Thus left to himself, Richard led the crusading host southward along the coast, and defeated Saladin at a pitched battle at Arsouf. He forced his way to within a few miles of Jerusalem, but, before attacking it, turned back to secure himself a base on the sea, through which he could get stores and provisions from his ships. He took Ascalon, therefore, and garrisoned it, and afterwards captured many neighbouring forts, and intercepted a great caravan which was bringing arms and stores for Saladin across the desert from Egypt. But when he wished to start again for Jerusalem, dissensions broke out in the crusading camp. The subject of dispute was the succession to the throne of Jerusalem. Richard supported Guy of Lusignan, one of his Poitevin vassals, while the French and the bulk of the other Crusaders wished to elect an Italian prince, Conrad of Montferrat. The quarrel kept the army idle till the hot season of 1092 arrived, and endured till Conrad was slain by a Saracen fanatic; then Richard moved forward, but when he had arrived within four hours' march of Jerusalem, the French portion of the army, worn out by thirst and exhaustion, refused to advance any further. Richard was forced to fall back when at the very goal, and refused even to look upon the Holy City. "My eyes shall never behold it, if my arm may not reconquer it," he cried, and, muffling his face in his cloak, he turned back towards the coast.

After defeating the Saracens in another fight near Jaffa, Richard patched up a truce for three years with Saladin, and resolved to return home. It was obvious that with thinned ranks and disloyal allies he could not retake Jerusalem, and he had received such news from England as to the doings of his brother John and his neighbour King Philip, that he was anxious to get home as soon as possible. So he made terms with the sultan, by which Acre and the other places that he had conquered were left to the Christians, and permission was given them to make pilgrimages to Jerusalem without let or hindrance. Then, without waiting for his fleet or his army, he started off in wild haste on a private ship, intending to land at Venice and make his way overland through Germany, for "he could not trust himself in France after the news that he had just received (1193).

But more haste proved less speed, in this as in so many other cases. Richard's ship was wrecked in the Adriatic, and he had to land at Ragusa. His path took him through the duchy of Leopold of Austria, whom he had so grievously offended at the siege of Acre. Although he was travelling in disguise, he was recognized at Vienna, and promptly cast into prison by the revengeful duke. After keeping him awhile in chains, Leopold sold him to his suzerain, the Emperor Henry VI. That monarch, being thus placed by chance in possession of the person of a sovereign with whom he was not at war, had the meanness to trump up charges against Richard in order to have some excuse for making him pay a ransom. So he accused his captive of having murdered Conrad of Montferrat, of having unjustly deprived the rebel Isaac of Cyprus of his realm, and of having insulted Leopold the Austrian. He was in prison more than a year, and no one in England knew what had become of him, since he had been travelling disguised and almost alone when he was taken.

Meanwhile, during the three years of Richard's absence England had been much disturbed. William Longchamp, the haughty and tactless bishop whom he had left behind him as Justiciar, made himself so much disliked by his pride, his despotism, and his violence that there was a general rising against him. The king's brother John, the Earl of Cornwall, put himself at the head of the malcontents, and began seizing all the royal castles on which he could lay hands. Longchamp was at last forced to resign his place and fled over-sea, hardly escaping the fury of the people at Dover, where he was caught in the disguise of a huckster-woman and nearly pulled to pieces. His place as Justiciar was taken by Archbishop Walter of Rouen, whom Richard sent home from the Crusade for the purpose. Walter was a prudent and able man, but found a hard task before him, for Earl John was set on making himself a party in England, and aimed at the crown. When the news of Richard's captivity reached London, John openly avowed his intention, and allied himself with Philip of France. That prince had begun to intrigue against the King of England the moment that he got back from the Crusade. He had a claim on the Vexin, a district on the Norman border, which he had once ceded to Henry II. on the understanding that it should be the dowry of a French princess whom Richard was to marry. As the marriage had never taken place, and the English king had chosen another bride, Philip had much show of reason on his side. But he aimed not only at recovering the Vexin, but at winning as much of his absent neighbour's land as he could seize. With this object he offered to support Earl John in his attempt to seize the English throne, in return for some territorial gains. John was ready enough to agree, did homage to him, and gave him up the Vexin and the city of Tours. Meanwhile they both sent secret messages to the Emperor Henry, to beg him to detain Richard in prison as long as possible.

But Henry thought more of screwing money out of his prisoner than of keeping him for ever in his grasp. He offered to release Richard on receiving the enormous ransom of 150,000 marks (£100,000). It was a huge sum for England to raise, but so anxious was the nation to get back its king, that no hesitation was made in accepting the bargain. Meanwhile John and Philip, knowing that their enemy would soon be loose, were stirred up to hasty action. Philip raised his host and attacked Normandy, but was beaten off with loss from Rouen. John hired mercenary soldiers, gathered his friends, and seized a number of the royal castles in England. But only a small number of discontented barons backed him, and he was held in check by the loyal majority, led by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Hubert Walter, who put himself at the head of the king's party. Even while this civil war was in progress, the money for Richard's ransom was being raised, by the imposition of a crushing tax of "one-fourth on all movable goods, and twenty shillings on every knight's fee."

In the spring of 1194 the emperor gave Richard his liberty, after receiving the stipulated sum and making his prisoner swear an oath of homage to him for his kingdom of England. But this preposterous vow of allegiance was not taken seriously by Richard or by England, being wrung by force from a helpless captive. On reaching England, the king put himself at the head of the army which was operating against the rebels, and took Nottingham and Tickhill, the two last strongholds which held out. John himself fled over-sea; some months later he was pardoned by his long-suffering brother.

Thus Richard was once more a free man, and in full possession of his realm. There was much in the state of England that required the master's eye, but the king was far more set on punishing his neighbour, King Philip, than on attending to the wants of his subjects. After appointing new officials to take charge of the kingdom, and raising great sums of money, he hurried over to Normandy to plunge into hostilities with the French.

England never saw Richard again; indeed, in the whole course of his ten years' reign, he only spent seven months on this side of the channel. His heart was always in France, where he had been bred up, and not in England, though he had been born in the palace of Beaumont, in Oxford, not fifty yards from the spot where these lines are written. The remaining six years of Richard's reign were entirely occupied in fruitless and weary border wars with the French king. It was a war of sieges and skirmishes, not of great battles. Richard held his own, in spite of the rebellions stirred up by Philip among his vassals in Aquitaine; but he did not succeed in crushing his adversary, as might have been expected from his superior military skill. In England the struggle was only felt through the heavy taxation which the king imposed on the land, to keep up his large mercenary army over-sea. Archbishop Hubert Walter ruled as Justiciar with considerable wisdom and success, and as long as Richard was sent the money that he craved, he left the realm to itself. Hubert's rule was not altogether a quiet one, but the very troubles that arose against him show the growing strength of national feeling and liberty in England. In 1198, the Great Council, headed by Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln, refused the king's newest and most exorbitant schemes of taxation, and Hubert could not force them to pay. London in the same year was disturbed by a great democratic rising of the poorer citizens, headed by one William Fitz-Osbert, called Longbeard, who rose in riot to compel the aldermen to readjust the taxes of the city, and the Justiciar had to take arms to put it down. Fitz-Osbert fortified himself in Bow Church, but was wounded, taken, and hung.

An obscure and unworthy end was reserved for the restless and reckless son of the great Henry. He heard that Widomar, Viscount of Limoges, one of his vassals in Aquitaine, had found a great treasure-trove of gold, and bade him give it up. The viscount would not surrender all his find, so Richard laid siege to his castle of Chaluz. The place was taken, but while directing the attack the king received a wound from a crossbow bolt in his shoulder. His unskilful surgeons could not cure him, the wound gangrened, and Richard saw that his days were numbered. When the castle fell, Bertrand de Gourdon, the archer who had discharged the fatal bolt, was sought out and brought to his bedside. "What had I done that you should deal thus with me?" asked the king. "You slew my father and my two brothers with your own hands," replied the soldier, "and now I am ready to bear any torture since I know that you have to die." The fierce answer touched a chord to which Richard could respond. He bade his officers send the man away unharmed, but Mercadet, the chief among his mercenary captains, kept Gourdon in bonds till the king breathed his last, and then flayed him alive (April 6, 1199).

Of all the kings who ever ruled in this land Richard cared least for England, and paid least attention to its needs. But his reign was not therefore one that was harmful to his realm. The yoke of an absent king, even if he be a spendthrift, is not so hard as that of a tyrant who dwells at home, and England has known much worse days than those of the later years of Richard Cœur de Lion. His ministers kept up the traditions of the administration of Henry II., and ruled the land with law and order, duly summoning the Great Council, assessing taxation with its aid, and levying it with as little oppression as they could, through agents selected by the nation. One considerable advance in the direction of liberty was granted by Richard, when he allowed the shire-moots to choose for themselves "coroners," officials who were to take charge of the royal prerogatives in the counties in place of the sheriff; they were to investigate such matters as murder, riot, or injury to the king's lands or revenues, and the other offences which were called "the pleas of the crown." Thus an officer chosen by the people was substituted for one chosen by the crown, a great advantage to those who were to come under his hand. The "coroner" still survives in England, but all his duties save that of inquiring into cases of suspicious death have long been stripped from him.

Richard the Lion-hearted left two male kinsmen to dispute about his vast dominions. These were Arthur of Brittany, the son of his next brother Geoffrey, and John of Cornwall, his false and turbulent youngest brother. The English Great Council chose John as king without any hesitation; they would not take Arthur, a mere boy of twelve, who had never been seen in England; they preferred John in spite of his great and obvious faults. But in the continental dominions of Richard there was no such unanimity: the unruly barons of Anjou and Aquitaine thought they would gain through having a powerless boy to reign over them, rather than the unscrupulous and grasping Earl John. If it had not been for the old queen dowager, Eleanor of Aquitaine, who came forward to defend her best-loved son's claims, and to persuade her Gascon vassals to adhere to his cause, John would never have obtained any hold on the continent. By Eleanor's aid he triumphed for a moment, but baron after baron rose against him, using Arthur's name as his pretence, and civil war never ceased from the moment of John's accession. Philip of France, who now, as always, had his own ends to serve, feigned to espouse the cause of Arthur, and acknowledged him as his uncle's heir alike in Normandy, Anjou, and Aquitaine. Thus the war between France and England, which had dragged on through the reign of Richard, continued in a new form all through the time of John. There was a partial pacification in 1200, when Philip was bought off from Arthur's cause by the cession of the county of Evreux; but he took arms again in 1202, on the flimsy pretext that John, as Duke of Normandy, refused to plead in French law courts against his own vassals.

Philip was induced to resume the struggle mainly because of his rival's growing unpopularity in all parts of his dominion. As king, John displayed on a larger scale all the faults that he had shown before his accession. All the vices of the Angevin house reached their highest development in him; he was as hot-tempered as his father, as false as his mother, as ungrateful as his brother Henry, as cruel, extravagant, and reckless as his brother Richard. His own special characteristic was a crooked and short-sighted cunning, which brought him through the troubles of one moment only to involve him in deeper vexations in the next. His reign in England had begun with heavy taxation for the French war. He had irritated the baronage by divorcing his wife Hawise, the heiress of the great earldom of Gloucester, without any cause or reason. Then he had carried off by violence Isabella of Angoulême from her affianced husband, the Count of La Marche, one of his greatest vassals in Aquitaine, and married her in spite of the threats of the Church.

It was Count Hugh of La Marche who in revenge led the next rising of the unruly French vassals of John. He sent for Arthur of Brittany, who came to his aid with a great band of King Philip's knights, and together they invaded Aquitaine and laid siege to Mirebeau, where lay the old Queen Eleanor, John's one trusty supporter in the south. Roused by the news of his mother's danger, the King of England made a hasty dash on Mirebeau, surprised the rebel camp, and captured Arthur of Brittany with all his chief supporters. This success was fated to be his ruin, for when he found his nephew in his hands, John could not resist the temptation to murder him. After keeping him in prison for some months, he had him secretly slain in the castle of Rouen (April, 1203). The poor lad had only just reached the age of sixteen when he was thus cut off.

Arthur's murder profoundly shocked John's subjects on both sides of the sea, but it was absolutely fatal to his cause in France. His rebellious subjects, unable to use Arthur's name against their master any longer, threw themselves into the hands of the King of France, and took him as their direct lord and sovereign. Philip went through a solemn form of summoning John, as Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, to present himself at Paris, and there be tried for slaying his nephew. When John failed—as was natural—to appear, he was condemned in his absence, and adjudged to have forfeited all the fiefs that he held from the French crown.

To give effect to his sentence, Philip invaded Normandy and began to lay siege to its fortresses. John crossed to Normandy, but did not take the field; his conduct was so strange that men thought that some infatuation from heaven had fallen upon him as a judgment for having slain his nephew. He lay at Rouen for many months, giving great feasts, and boasting that when he chose he would drive King Philip out of the duchy. But, instead of sallying out to make his vaunts good, he quietly looked on, while Philip took town after town with little resistance. The Normans did not love John, and fought feebly or not at all. Only Château Gaillard, a great castle which Richard I. had built to guard the valley of the lower Seine, made any serious defence. Instead of opposing the enemy, John fled from Normandy and took refuge in England. After his departure, Rouen and the remaining cities of the duchy threw open their gates to the French. In the following year Philip pursued his victorious career, and completed the conquest of Anjou and Touraine. In 1206 he fell upon Aquitaine, and conquered Poitou and Northern Guienne. Only the great ports of Bordeaux and La Rochelle, with the southern half of Guienne, remained true to John.

Thus passed away, not only the great but ephemeral continental empire which Henry II. had built up, but also the Norman duchy itself, whose fortunes had been united to those of England for nearly a century and a half. For the future the Plantagenet kings owned only a corner of southern France, and were no longer great continental sovereigns. The monarch's loss was the nation's gain. England's kings were no longer foreigners; they did not spend half their time abroad, or devote their whole energy to schemes of aggrandisement in France. The Anglo-Norman barons, too, were compelled to become wholly English, since their estates over-sea fell into the hands of the enemy and passed away from them. In this way John's cruelty and shiftlessness did more for England's good than the wisdom and strength of his father.

But in the mean while John, being deprived of his continental dominions, was constrained to reside in England, and proved a most undesirable neighbour to his unhappy subjects. After an unsuccessful attempt to reconquer Poitou in 1206, he made peace with King Philip, on such terms as he could obtain. Bordeaux and the duchy of Guienne remained with him, but he was compelled to acquiesce in the loss of all his other provinces.

John was barely quit of his disastrous French war when he became involved in a quarrel with the papacy, of which the issue was even more disgraceful than that of his strife with King Philip. In 1205 died Archbishop Hubert Walter, who had served King Richard so well as Justiciar. In ordinary times his successor would have been duly nominated by the king and elected by the monks of Canterbury, who formed the cathedral chapter of that see. But John was in evil plight at the time; he was universally disliked, and the clergy all over Europe were being spurred on by the example of the bold and arrogant Pope Innocent III. to assert new and unheard-of claims and privileges. When the news of Hubert's death was brought, a majority of the monks of Canterbury met in secret conclave and elected Reginald, their sub-prior, as archbishop, without asking the king's leave. Reginald at once started off for Rome to get his appointment confirmed by Pope Innocent. When John heard what had been done, he came to Canterbury in great wrath, and by threats and menaces compelled the monks to proceed to a second election, and to chose his favourite, John de Grey, Bishop of Norwich, to fill Hubert Walter's place. He then sent an embassy to Rome to submit this election to the Pope. But Innocent III. would have neither Reginald nor John for archbishop; he said that the first had been secretly and illegally chosen, while the second had been imposed on the chapter by force and threats. Then he took the unprecedented step of appointing to the see himself; he made the representatives of both John and Reginald come before him, and frightened or cajoled them into accepting his nominee, Stephen Langton, a worthy and learned English cardinal who resided with him at Rome. Langton was personally all that could be desired, but it was a flagrantly illegal usurpation that the Pope should impose him on the English king and nation without their consent.

John was driven to fury by this arrogant claim of the Pope. He refused to accept the nomination, or to allow Langton to enter England. In return Innocent laid an interdict on the realm, suspending on his own authority the celebration of divine service, closing the churches, and even prohibiting the dead from being buried in consecrated ground. If the English Church had stood by the king and refused to take notice of this harsh decree, it would have been of little effect. But the clergy always followed the Pope; they looked upon themselves as a great international guild depending on the Roman see, and disregarded all their rights and sympathies as Englishmen. The majority of the bishops published the interdict, and bade their flocks observe it. Many of them, fearing John's inevitable wrath, fled over-sea the moment that they had promulgated the sentence (1208). They were wise to do so, for the king raged furiously against the whole body of clergy; he exiled the monks of Canterbury, seized the estates and revenues of the absconding bishops, and declared that, till the interdict was removed, all ecclesiastical persons should be outside the pale of the law. They should not be allowed to appear in the courts, and no one who molested them should be punished. John set the example of seizing clerical property himself, and many of his courtiers and officers followed his lead.

Thus began a long struggle between the power of the Pope and that of the king. For five years it continued, to the great misery of England, for the nation was deeply religious, and felt most keenly the deprivation of all its spiritual privileges. Yet for a long time the people stood by the king, for it was generally felt that the Pope's arbitrary conduct was indefensible. John himself cared nought for papal censures, as long as nothing more than spiritual pressure was brought to bear on him. He filled his coffers with Church money, and laughed at the interdict. But presently Innocent found a more effective way of bending the king's will. He proclaimed that he would depose John for contumacy, and give his kingdom to another. The mandate to drive him out was entrusted to John's old and active foe, Philip of France, who at once began to prepare a great fleet and army in Normandy (1213).

The English barons and people were more angered than frightened, and a great army mustered on Barham Down, in Kent, to oppose the French landing. But the king himself was much cowed by the Pope's threat. He knew that he was disliked and despised by his subjects, and he did not trust them in the hour of danger. Instead of fighting the quarrel out, he made secret proffers of submission. So the Pope's envoy, Pandulf, came to Dover, and received John's abject surrender. Not only did he agree to acknowledge Langton as archbishop, and to restore all the lands and revenues of which he had robbed the Church, but he stooped to win Innocent's favour by doing homage to him, and declaring the kingdom of England a fief of the Holy See. He gave his crown into Pandulf's hands, and then took it back from him as a gift from the Pope. In return the papal mandate to Philip was withdrawn, and Pandulf bade the French king dismiss his fleet and army, and cease to make war on the vassal of the Church (May, 1213).

John's gift of the English crown to the Pope had been done secretly and privately, without any summoning or consulting of the Great Council; it had been accomplished behind the back of the nation. When it became known, the baronage and the people were alike disgusted at the king's grovelling submission. He had induced them to suffer untold miseries in his cause, and had then left them in the lurch and surrendered all that they had been fighting for.

For the moment, however, John's intrigue had its success. The papal approval was withdrawn from the King of France, and—what was of more importance—an English fleet under William Longsword, the Earl of Salisbury fell upon the French invasion-flotilla as it lay in the Port of Damme, and took or sunk well-nigh every vessel. The king was free from danger again, and talked of taking the offensive against the French and crushing his enemy Philip.

The last act of John's troubled reign was now beginning. While the king was dreaming of nothing but war in France, the nation was preparing to put a stop to his erratic and tyrannical rule by armed force. When Archbishop Langton was received in England, he proved himself no mere creature of the Pope, but a good Englishman. One of his first acts was to propose to the baronage, at a great assembly in St. Paul's Cathedral, that the king should be asked to ratify and reissue the charter that his great-grandfather Henry I. had granted to the English people, binding himself to abstain from all vexatious and oppressive customs, and abide by the ancient customs of the realm. This proposal was accepted at once by the great majority of the barons as the wisest and most constitutional means of bringing pressure on the king.

John meanwhile had called out the whole military force of the nation for an invasion of France. But all the barons of the North refused to follow him, and so great was the discontent of the English that he had mainly to depend on foreign mercenaries. He staked all his fortunes on the ensuing campaign, believing that if he could reconquer his lost continental dominions, he would afterwards win his way to complete control in England. His schemes were very far-reaching: Philip was to be attacked from north and south at once; while John was to land in Poitou and march on the Loire, a great confederacy of John's allies were to assail France from the north. This league was headed by John's nephew, Otho of Saxony, who claimed the title of emperor, but had been withstood in Germany by competitors whom Philip of France had supported. In revenge Otho gathered a North-German army, supported by the Dukes of Brabant and Holland, and the Counts of Boulogne and Flanders. John sent a mercenary force under the Earl of Salisbury to join him, and the combined host entered France and met King Philip at Bouvines, near Lille. John had trusted that his own attack on southern France would have distracted the French king's attention, but Philip left him almost unopposed, and gathered the whole force of France to oppose the Germans and Flemings. While John was overrunning Poitou and storming Angers, Philip was crushing his confederates. At the battle of Bouvines the combined army was scattered to the winds; the emperor was put to flight, and the Earl of Salisbury and the Count of Boulogne captured (July 27, 1214). Otho of Saxony was ruined by the fight, and never raised his head again; nor did any German host invade France for the next three hundred years. John, though he had not been present at the fight, was as effectually crushed as Otho. Free from danger from the north, the French king turned upon him, and drove him out of his ephemeral conquests in Poitou, so that he had to return to England completely foiled and beaten.

But in England John had now to face his angry baronage. When he came home in wrath, and began to threaten to punish every man who had not followed him to the invasion of France, the barons drew together and prepared for armed resistance. In earlier days we have seen the English nobility withstanding the king in the cause of feudal anarchy. In the time of Stephen or of Henry II., the crown had represented the interests of the nation, and the barons those of their own class alone. It was then for England's good that the king should succeed in establishing a strong central government by putting down his turbulent vassals. But now things were changed. Henry II. had made the crown so strong that the nation was in far greater danger of misgovernment by a tyrannical king than of anarchy under a mob of feudal chiefs. The barons did not any longer represent themselves alone; they were closely allied both with the Church and with the people for the defence of the common rights of all three against a grasping and unscrupulous monarch. In the present struggle the baronage were headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, their wisest counsellor, and they were everywhere supported both by the towns and by the smaller freemen of the whole realm. We shall see that in the oncoming struggle they demanded, not new privileges for themselves, but law and liberty for every subject of the English crown.

The first meeting of the barons was held at Bury St. Edmunds, in November, 1214: it was attended mainly by the lords of the North; the majority of the nobility had not yet moved. They formulated their demand that the king should give England a charter of liberties, drew up a list of the points which were to be insisted on, and determined to go in arms to the king at Christmas to lay their requests before him. John was seriously frightened; he asked the Pope's aid, took the vows of a crusader in order to get the sympathy of the Church on his side, and collected an army of mercenaries. But when he sounded the intentions of those of his vassals who had not yet taken arms, he found that one and all approved of the demands of the insurgent barons, and refused to aid him against them.

John was always lacking in moral courage; instead of taking the field at the head of his mercenaries, he began to treat with the rebels, resolved to grant all they asked, and then to bide his time and repudiate his promises at the earliest possible opportunity. So befell the famous meeting at Runnymede, where the king solemnly swore to grant all the provisions of the "Great Charter," which had been drawn up for his signature by Archbishop Langton and a committee composed of an equal number of the insurgent barons and of those who had not taken up arms.

The Great Charter was signed on the 15th of June, 1215, in the presence of the archbishop, the whole of the baronage, and a vast assembly of all ranks. It is a document of sixty-three clauses, of which many were quite trivial and related to purely personal or local grievances. But the important part of its provisions may be summed up under six heads.

Firstly, the king promises that "the English Church shall be free"—free, that is, from violent interference in the election of its prelates, and from illegal taxation.

Secondly, the feudal rights of the king over his tenants-in-chief are defined. He is only to raise the customary "aids" and dues, and their amount is laid down. His rights of wardship over widows and orphans are stated and limited. In a similar way the tenants-in-chief promise to exercise only these same rights over their own vassals.

Thirdly, there is to be no taxation without the consent of the Great Council—the first indication of the control of Parliament over the national revenues.

Fourthly, the administration of justice is to be strengthened and purified. No one is to be tried or punished more than once for the same offence. No one is to be imprisoned on the king's private fiat, but if arrested he must be at once put on trial, and that before a jury of his peers. Fines for every sort of offence are to be fixed and made proportionate to the crime, not to the king's idea of the amount he could extract from the criminal.

Fifthly, the king is not to put foreigners, ignorant of the laws of England, in any judicial or administrative post, and he is at once to dismiss all his foreign mercenary troops.

Sixthly, the city of London, and all other cities which enjoy rights and privileges under earlier royal charters, are to be fully confirmed in them.

The Great Charter then plunges into a mass of smaller grievances, where we need not follow it. But it ends with a most peculiar and important clause, which shows how little the baronage trusted the king. A body of twenty-five guardians of the Charter is appointed, who undertake to see that the king carries it out, and they are authorized to constrain him to observe it by force of arms if he swerves from his plighted word. These guardians include seven earls, fourteen barons, three sons of great lords whose fathers still survived, and the Mayor of London.

The character of Magna Carta is very noticeable; it is rather unsystematic in shape, being mainly composed of a list of grievances which are to be remedied. It does not purport to be a full statement of the English constitution, but only a recapitulation of the points on which the king had violated it. But it is not merely a check on John's evil doings, but a solemn engagement between the king, the barons, the Church, and the people that each shall respect the rights of the other. Wherever it is stated that the king is to abstain from using any particular malpractice against his vassals, it is also added that his vassals will on their part never use that same form of oppression against their own tenants. Thus it guarantees the rights of the small man against the great, no less than those of the great man against the king. It is in this respect that the Charter differs from many grants of privileges exacted by foreign nobles from foreign kings. Abroad the barons often curbed the royal power, but they did it for their own selfish ends alone, not for the common good of the nation.

John had signed the Charter in a moment of fear and depression of spirits. He did not intend to observe it a moment longer than he could help, and called its provisions "mere foolishness." When the barons dispersed, he violated his engagements by gathering another great horde of mercenaries, and sent to Rome to his suzerain Innocent III., to get absolution from the oath he had sworn. As he had once utilized the nation against the Pope, so he would now utilize the Pope against the nation.

Innocent, who cared nothing for the rights or wrongs of England, resolved to support his obedient vassal. He censured Archbishop Langton for siding with the barons, and summoned him to Rome to answer for his conduct. He freed the king from his oath, and he swore that he would excommunicate any man who took arms against him. But John had taught his barons to despise ecclesiastical thunders. They flew to arms, and war broke out. The king at first had the advantage; his mercenaries were all at hand, and the barons were scattered and unorganized. The king took Rochester, and hung the garrison who held out against him, and then started northward, harrying the land with fire and sword as far as Berwick.

Provoked beyond endurance, the majority of the barons swore that they would cast away John and all his house. They declared him deposed, and resolved to choose a new king. But they made a great mistake in their choice, for they offered the crown to Lewis, the Prince-royal of France, who had married Blanche, one of John's nieces. Any other candidate would have been better, for Lewis was the son of King Philip, the great enemy of England, and by calling him in, the barons seemed to be allying themselves with the national foe. Many who would have gladly served against John in another cause, refused to take arms in that of the Frenchman (1216).

Meanwhile Prince Lewis landed in Kent, was received into London, and became master of all eastern England. But he soon found that he was the king of a faction, not of the whole nation. Many of the barons joined John rather than serve a foreigner; many more remained neutral. The whole realm was divided; here and there castles and towns held out against the new king, and in especial the seamen and merchants of the Cinque Ports refused to open their gates to a Frenchman. John resolved to try the ordeal of battle; he took Lincoln, and marched southward. But while his army was crossing the sea-marshes of the Wash it was overtaken by a high tide, and all his baggage and treasure, with many of his men, were swept away. John himself escaped with difficulty, and fell ill next day, of rage and grief and overexertion, as is most probable, though contemporary writers thought he had been poisoned. To the great benefit of England, he died within a week of his seizure, at Newark Castle (October 19, 1216). No man had a good word to say for him; cruel, perjured, rash and cowardly by turns, an evil-liver, a treacherous son and brother, he was loathed by every one who knew him.