Still more prompt and vigorous were John’s preparations for defence. He seems to have begun by ordering that all English ships should return to the ports to which they severally belonged not later than the first Sunday in Lent, March 3. On that day he despatched writs to the bailiffs of the seaport towns, bidding them make out a list of the vessels which they found in their respective ports capable of carrying six horses or more, and direct the captains and owners of all such vessels, in his name, to bring them to Portsmouth at Mid-Lent (March 21), “well manned with good and brave mariners, well armed, who shall go on our service at our expense.”[790] He next bade the sheriffs summon all earls, barons, knights, freemen and sergeants, whosoever they were and of whomsoever they held, who ought to have arms or could get them, and who had done him homage and fealty, to the intent that, “as they love us and themselves and all that is theirs, they be at Dover at the close of Easter next, well prepared with horses and arms and with all their might to defend our head, and their own heads, and the land of England. And let no man who can bear arms stay behind, on pain of culvertage and perpetual servitude; and let each man follow his own lord; and let those who have no land and can carry arms come thither to take our pay.” Each sheriff was to see that all sales of victuals and all markets within his sheriffdom “followed the host,” and that none were held elsewhere within his jurisdiction. He himself was to come to the muster “in force, with horses and arms,” and to bring his roll, whereby the king might be certified who had obeyed his summons and who had stayed behind.[791]
England responded as quickly and readily as France to the call of her king; the threat of “culvertage” seems to have acted upon the Englishmen of John’s day as the threat of being accounted “nithing” had acted upon their forefathers in the days of William Rufus and Henry I.; they came together at the appointed places—Dover, Faversham and Ipswich—in such crowds that in a few days, despite John’s precautions, the supply of food became insufficient, and the marshals of the host found it needful to dismiss the greater part of the light-armed troops, retaining only the knights, sergeants and better-armed freemen, with the cross-bowmen and archers. The picked body thus left, which was finally reviewed by the king on Barham Down, near Canterbury, {May 4–6} was still so numerous that a patriotic chronicler declares, “If they had been all of one heart and mind for king and country, there was no prince under heaven against whom they could not have defended the realm of England.”[792] How many of the barons in the host had come to it with the intention of going over to Philip as soon as he landed, it is useless to inquire; perhaps the only one whom we can with full confidence acquit of any such suspicion is William the Marshal.[793] The king’s plan, however, was that his fleet should intercept the invaders and “drown them in the sea before ever they could set foot on the land”; and as his ships were more numerous than Philip’s, the plan had a good chance of success.[794]
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]
John had, in fact, at one stroke cut the ground from under the feet of all his enemies both at home and abroad. The people resumed their ordinary attitude of loyalty on Pandulf’s assurance that it was once more, and more than ever, sanctioned by the Church. The traitor barons found themselves without a cloak for their treason, and were reduced to send out letters patent repudiating all connexion with the French king.[810] Philip found himself without an ally, and without an excuse for his enterprise. The believers in Peter of Wakefield, indeed, still looked forward with a vague expectation to Ascension Day {May 23}. But the king himself could meet its dawn without fear. He had ordered his royal tent to be set up in a large open field, and caused his heralds to proclaim a general invitation to all who were within reach, to come and spend the festival day in stately festivities with him. “And a right joyous day it was, the king taking his pleasure and making merry with the bishops and nobles who had come together at his call.”[811] Still Peter’s disciples were not convinced; some of them took up the idea that the prediction might refer not to the ecclesiastical but to the civil anniversary of John’s coronation, May 27, which in 1213 was four days after Ascension Day. This anniversary, however, passed over likewise without any mishap. Then the wise and the foolish alike began to see that John had prevented a literal fulfilment of the prophecy by lending himself to a figurative one. He had “ceased to be king” by laying his crown at the feet of Pandulf, to take it back again on conditions which unquestionably helped to fix it, for the time at least, more securely than ever on his brow. The scapegoat of all parties was the unlucky prophet himself. Next day he and his son, who had been imprisoned with him, were tied each to a horse’s tail, dragged thus from Corfe to Wareham, and there hanged.[812]
Pandulf meanwhile had returned to France, and commanded Philip, on pain of the Pope’s displeasure, to lay aside all thoughts of invading England and go home in peace. Philip at first indignantly refused to abandon a scheme which, he said, he had planned at the Pope’s instigation, and for which he had already spent more than sixty thousand pounds.[813] But he dared not go on in the teeth of the papal prohibition; so he turned his wrath upon the one great feudatary of his realm who had refused to take part in the projected invasion, Count Ferrand of Flanders. Ordering his fleet to sail round as quickly as possible to Swine, the king dashed into Flanders at the head of all his forces. Ferrand besought help of John, with whom he was already in alliance; and John at once despatched five hundred ships, carrying a large body of horse and foot under the command of his half-brother Earl William of Salisbury and the counts of Holland and Boulogne.[814] They sailed on Tuesday, May 28, intending to land at Swine and march across the country to join Ferrand; but a contrary wind delayed them so that they did not reach Swine till Thursday, the 30th; and then, to their amazement, they found the harbour occupied by the French fleet, which, however, they soon discovered to be unguarded save by a few seamen, all the troops having gone ashore to ravage the neighbourhood. Salisbury at once ordered an attack; the French sailors were speedily overcome; three hundred ships laden with provisions were set drifting towards England, a hundred more were rifled of their contents and then set on fire. “Never came so much wealth into England since King Arthur went to conquer it,” says a contemporary poet.[815] Next day Count Ferrand came to meet his allies, and renewed his league with John.[816] On the Saturday—Whitsun Eve—the earls disembarked their troops and advanced to attack the French at Dam. The overwhelming numbers of the enemy, who were headed by King Philip himself, compelled them to retreat. Salisbury, however, not only escaped to his ships, but brought all his prizes safe to England;[817] while Philip was so mad with rage at the disaster to his fleet that he ordered the remnant of it to be burnt.[818] So far as England was concerned, his expedition was at an end.
John at once resolved that the fleet and the host which had been gathered for the defence of England should be used for an attack upon France. His plan was, while strengthening Ferrand’s hands so as to keep Philip busy in Flanders, himself to land with an army in Poitou, and thus place the French kingdom between two fires. At the end of June he reassembled his forces at Porchester, and again despatched William of Salisbury to Flanders with further reinforcements and large sums of money. The magnates, however, refused to accompany the king over sea till he was absolved from excommunication.[819] Their excuse was transparently false; his public absolution was indeed committed to Archbishop Stephen, and therefore deferred till Stephen’s arrival in England; but Pandulf had, in the Pope’s name, declared him reconciled to the Church. It could only be from political motives that men who had without protest marched with the excommunicate king against Scotland, Ireland and Wales, and gathered year after year at his festival banquets, now suddenly became more punctilious about a matter of ecclesiastical discipline than Innocent III. himself. It was, however, no moment for quarrelling with them openly; and their excuse, such as it was, soon ceased to exist.
King and legate had been rapidly pushing on the arrangements for the return of the exiles;[820] and in June or July Archbishop Stephen and four of the bishops landed at Dover.[821] On S. Margaret’s Day, Saturday, July 20, they were received by the king at Winchester.[822] He seems to have gone forth to meet them on the crest of the hill which lies to the east of the city.[823] He threw himself at the primate’s feet, bidding him welcome, and with tears imploring his mercy; “and the prelates and all the rest, when they saw this, could not refrain from weeping.” The procession made its way to the Old Minster and entered the chapter-house; the king swore on the Gospels “that he would cherish, defend and maintain the holy Church and her ordained ministers; that he would restore the good laws of his forefathers, especially S. Edward’s, rendering to all men their rights; and that before the next Easter he would make full restitution of all property which had been taken away in connexion with the Interdict.” This oath he seems to have repeated publicly at the door of the church; Stephen then formally absolved him, led him into the church, and celebrated mass in his presence, accepting his offering and giving him the kiss of peace; “and there was great joy among the people.”[824]
Having at last made up his mind to a formal reconciliation with both Pope and primate, John showed no signs of a wish to evade any part of its terms. During the past three months order after order had been issued in his name for carrying into effect the provisions of his agreement with Pandulf. The outlawry of the clergy had been revoked at once, on May 15, and this revocation was repeated on June 13.[825] Two laymen—Eustace de Vesci and Robert Fitz-Walter—who had gone into exile, not in company with any of the bishops nor for their sake, but on independent grounds, in the autumn of 1212, had been specially mentioned by name in John’s agreement with the Pope, and promised reinstatement in their lands and in the king’s favour. Safe-conducts were issued to these two barons on May 27, and orders for the restitution of their property on July 17, 19, and 21.[826] For the bishops something more than mere restitution was required; they, or the Pope and Pandulf for them, claimed indemnification as well; and the terms of the indemnity were difficult to decide. John seems to have proposed that they should be decided by a kind of general inquest; on the day {July 21} after his absolution he bade all the sheriffs in England cause a deputation of four men and the reeve from each township to be at S. Albans on August 4, “that through them and his other ministers he might ascertain the truth concerning the damages suffered by the several bishops, and what had been taken from them, and how much was due to each.” Whether such an inquisition was actually held does not appear; but early in August the justiciar and the bishop of Winchester met the primate, the other bishops and the magnates in a great council at S. Albans; there, in the king’s name, peace was proclaimed to all; the observance of King Henry’s laws and the disuse of evil customs were strictly enjoined; and the sheriffs, foresters, and other officers of the Crown were warned, “as they valued their limbs and their lives,” to commit no more extortions and wrongs, “as they had been wont to do.”[827]
John meanwhile had returned to the coast of Dorset, where the host had apparently been ordered to reassemble, with the intention of sailing for Poitou. In view of his own expected absence from England, he is said to have committed the government to the justiciar and the bishop of Winchester, bidding them “order all its affairs with the advice of the archbishop of Canterbury.”[828] The king’s departure, however, now met with a new series of checks. First the knights came to him in a body and protested that the months which had elapsed since they assembled for defence against the French had consumed all their money, so that they could not possibly follow him any farther unless he would pay their expenses. This he refused to do.[829] The barons of the north were the next recalcitrants; when called upon to accompany him over sea, they “with one mind and determination refused, asserting that according to the tenure of their lands they were not bound to him in this; besides that they were already too much worn out and impoverished by expeditions within the realm.”[830] The angry king embarked with his household on August 5 or 6, and sailed to Jersey; but finding that no one followed him thither he soon came back,[831] in a mighty rage, “cursing the day and hour when he had consented to the peace, and declaring that he had been deceived, and made a gazing-stock for nothing.”[832] His mercenaries and foreign auxiliaries were still a formidable host; and with these he set out for the north, “to bring back the rebels to their obedience.”[833] He seems to have landed at Corfe on August 9; he began his northward march from Winchester on the 16th, reached Wallingford on the 25th, and Northampton on the 28th.[834] On the 25th Archbishop Stephen was in London, presiding over a great council in S. Paul’s Cathedral.[835] Thence he hurried away in pursuit of the king; he overtook him at Northampton, and remonstrated vigorously against John’s plans of vengeance upon the northern barons, telling him he would bring contempt upon the oath which he had sworn before his absolution if he made war upon any man without a legal sentence. John “with a great clamour” declared that he would not put off the business of his realm for the archbishop, who had no concern with matters of lay jurisdiction; and early next morning he set out, “in a furious temper,” for Nottingham. The archbishop followed him, and threatened that unless the project were at once given up he would excommunicate every man, save the king himself, who should take part in any military expedition so long as the interdict continued in force; nor could John shake him off till he had appointed a day for the accused barons to come and stand their trial in his court.[836]
Characteristically, John behaved as if unconscious of defeat. He carried out his progress through the north in peaceable instead of warlike guise, and did not return to London till the end of September.[837] His arrival there was timed to coincide with that of the papal legate who came as the specially appointed minister of England’s restoration to the communion of the Church, and whose authority would for the time supersede that of the primate. On September 27 Cardinal Nicolas of Tusculum landed in England.[838] On the 30th he met the king, bishops and barons at a council in London, to discuss plans for a pecuniary settlement between the Crown and the clergy. John offered the bishops one hundred thousand marks down, with security for the payment before next Easter of any damages in excess of that sum which might be discovered on further investigation. The legate urged the bishops to accept this offer; but they preferred to accept nothing till they had prepared their own estimate and could demand the sum total at once; and the king readily consented to the delay. Three days had been spent in the discussion. On the fourth day, October 3, the council reassembled in S. Paul’s. At the foot of the high altar, in the sight of clergy and people, the ceremony which John and Pandulf had gone through at Ewell was repeated by John and Nicolas. John resigned his crown into the legate’s hands, received it back from him, and swore fealty to him as the Pope’s representative; and the charter of homage and tribute, which had been temporarily sealed with wax and delivered to Pandulf, was sealed with gold and finally made over to Nicolas, “for the benefit of the Pope and the Roman Church.”[839]
Still the interdict could not be raised till the settlement between the Crown and the bishops was completed; and another meeting for this purpose was appointed to take place at Reading on November 3. To this meeting all the interested parties came, except the king,[840] who was at Wallingford, where it seems he had appointed the northern barons to appear before his court on All Saints’ Day. The legate was there too, and through his mediation the barons were reconciled to the king and admitted to the kiss of peace.[841] As John did not show himself at Reading, the bishops went to Wallingford in their turn. By that time John had moved on to Woodstock; but he seems to have returned to Wallingford to meet them for a few hours on November 5,[842] and repeated his former proposals. These, however, “seemed little to those who had had their castles razed, their houses levelled with the ground, and their woods cut down”; so that it was decided to refer the matter to the arbitration of four barons. But this arbitration never took place. “All the parties concerned in the matter of the interdict” came together again at Reading on December 6,[843] and each of the injured persons brought forth a schedule of the amount of his losses and damages; the legate, however, supported the king in his refusal to pay the whole sum at once; and after three days’ deliberation no one received anything at all, except the archbishop and the five bishops who had been in exile beyond the sea, to whom John on December 12 ordered the payment of fifteen thousand marks.[844] At last it seems to have been agreed that the damages should be investigated by two sets of commissioners acting together, one set appointed by the king, the other by the primate, and that the sum to be paid by the Crown should be fixed—doubtless on the report of these commissioners—by the Pope; and this scheme was carried out in the following year.[845]
Other questions had arisen in connexion with the settlement between Church and king. There were no less than six vacant sees and thirteen vacant abbeys,[846] all, of course, in the king’s hands. In July 1213 John issued orders for filling these vacancies in the manner which had been customary under Henry II.; the several chapters were bidden to send delegates, by whom an election was to be made in the king’s presence, wherever he might chance to be.[847] This arrangement implied a tacit understanding that the delegates were to elect a candidate designated by the king. The bishops seized their opportunity to protest against this practice and claim for the churches their canonical right of free election, subject only to the royal assent, signified by the grant of the regalia. The legate seems to have been, passively at least, on the side of the Crown; but John was anxious to avoid any fresh quarrel with the primate, and he therefore allowed the elections to be left in abeyance till Nicolas should receive instructions about the matter from the Pope. These came at last in a somewhat ambiguous form. Innocent bade Nicolas cause the vacant sees and abbeys to be filled with men “not only distinguished for their good life and learning, but also faithful to the king and useful as helpers and advisers for the welfare of the realm, and appointed by means of canonical election or postulation, the king’s assent being sought thereunto.”[848] It was obviously possible to interpret this letter as sanctioning, by implication at least, the claims of the Crown; and Nicolas was quite willing thus to interpret it in John’s favour. John, however, knew that no such interpretation would ever be accepted by Langton; and with Langton he had no mind to quarrel at that moment, even though he might have the legate on his own side. He did indeed issue on January 2, 1214, orders for the election of a bishop to Worcester and an abbot to Eynsham, “according to the customs of the realm”;[849] but he seems to have immediately afterwards made an arrangement with the archbishop which satisfied the latter for the time being. On the 12th John signified to Stephen his acceptance of “the form known to us concerning the making of elections, saving our right in all things”; he abandoned his claim to have the elections held only in his own presence, and delegated the power of giving them the royal assent to the ministers who were to have the charge of the realm during his absence beyond the sea; and he closed his letter to the archbishop with the words: “Be assured that there is no controversy between us.”[850] On the 26th he wrote again to Stephen, requesting him to confirm the election of the vice-chancellor, Walter de Gray, to the see of Worcester, and issued orders for elections to five bishoprics and three great abbeys.[851]
What made both John and Stephen anxious for an agreement on this point was the king’s approaching departure for the Continent. Soon after Stephen’s arrival in England John had made up his mind that his expedition to Poitou must be postponed till the spring,[852] and in August (1213) he fixed February 2, 1214, as its approximate date.[853] Throughout the autumn and winter the fleet was preparing at Portsmouth under the superintendence of William de Wrotham, archdeacon of Taunton.[854] Arrangements were also in progress for securing the tranquillity of the realm during the king’s absence. On June 3 John—according to his own account at Pandulf’s desire—had made a truce with the Welsh to last till August 1.[855] By August 25 he had enlisted the aid of the newly arrived primate as a peacemaker between the English realm and these troublesome neighbours; the wardens of the Marches were authorized to agree to a prolongation of the truce till November 1, on the understanding that at its expiration the archbishop of Canterbury would negotiate with the Welsh on the king’s behalf.[856] Of these negotiations there is no further record; but they seem to have resulted in keeping the Welsh in check for some months at least.
In Ireland and in England John had to provide himself with new vicegerents. In July Bishop John of Norwich resigned the justiciarship of the Irish March to go to Rome on a mission for the king; the archbishop of Dublin was appointed justiciar in his stead.[857] On October 14 the office of chief justiciar of England was vacated by the death of Geoffrey Fitz-Peter,[858] who had held it ever since 1198, when he was appointed to it by Richard on the resignation of Hubert Walter. It is impossible to regard Geoffrey as a patriot; had he been one, he could scarcely have held the reins of government under John for fourteen years without coming into open conflict with his master. He was, however, a man of much weight in the land by reason of his noble birth, his great wealth, and his knowledge of law, and also because he was connected by kindred, affinity or friendship with all the great baronial houses. Such a man was necessarily somewhat of a check upon the self-will of John. The king’s personal feeling towards his minister found a characteristic expression when he heard of Geoffrey’s death: “When he gets to hell,” laughed John, “he may greet Archbishop Hubert, whom he is sure to meet there!”[859] So long as the king was himself in England he could do without any justiciar at all; and accordingly no successor was appointed to Geoffrey for more than three months. John was, however, too cautious to venture upon any glaring abuse of his newly acquired freedom of action[860] at a moment when it was of the utmost importance for him to conciliate all parties and all classes by every means in his power. The one recorded incident of this period of John’s personal government, indeed, looks almost like a dim foreshadowing of one of the most weighty innovations which were to be made by the constitutional reformers of the latter part of the century.
It seems that at the end of October or early in November the tenants by knight-service were ordered to meet the king at Oxford on November 15. On November 7 John sent letters to the sheriffs bidding each one of them cause the knights within his shire to appear as previously directed, with their arms, the barons also in person but without arms, “and”—so ran the writ—“that thou cause to come thither at the same time four discreet men of the shire, to speak with us concerning the affairs of our realm.”[861] This writ is the earliest known instance of an attempt to call into council on “the affairs of the realm” representatives of the freemen of the shire, as distinguished from the tenants-in-chivalry. Representatives in the strict sense of the word, indeed, they were not; the writ says nothing of how they were to be chosen, and there can be little doubt that they would be selected by the sheriff. Still, the fact remains that—so far as extant evidence goes—John Lackland seems to have been the first English statesman who proposed to give some place, however subordinate, in the great council of the realm to laymen who were neither barons nor knights, but simple freemen. His motive is plain; he was seeking to win the support of the yeomen as a counterpoise to the hostility of the barons. Unluckily we know nothing of the results of his experiment, and cannot even be sure that it was actually tried; for though the king was certainly at Oxford in that year on November 15 and the two following days,[862] no mention occurs, in either chronicle or record, of any council holden there at that date.