John was well known by the people whom he aspired to govern, and was universally detested. Scarcely had the rumor of the death of King Richard spread through France, when all the nobility of Brittany, Touraine, Anjou, and Maine declared themselves in favor of Prince Arthur, son of Geoffrey Plantagenet and of Constance of Brittany, born seven months after his father's death, whom Richard had repeatedly nominated as his successor. Under the influence of Eleanor, Aquitaine and Poitou recognized John as their liege-lord: he was in Normandy, and caused himself to be proclaimed at Rouen on the 25th of April. He had already sent the Archbishop of Canterbury back to England, to bring together all the barons, and to make them swear allegiance to John, Duke of Normandy, son of King Henry, son of the Empress Matilda. The repugnance felt towards him was very general, but the fear of anarchy decided several noblemen in favor of John; promises and presents influenced others, and, on the 25th of May, 1199, when John arrived in England, the greater number of the barons had become reconciled to his cause. The new king was crowned on the 27th of May at Westminster, the primate proclaiming aloud that the crown of England was not an inheritance descending by right of primogeniture, but that it belonged to the worthiest claimant. The worthiest claimant on this occasion was Prince John.
There had been no question raised about the rights of Arthur; but Philip-Augustus was too shrewd not to seize this pretext for renewing the war against John, whom he knew to be a coward, a sluggard, and a sovereign unpopular in his kingdom; he claimed, therefore, in the name of the young prince, whose mother had placed him under the royal protection, nearly all King John's continental domains. Hostilities recommenced, and Brittany was ravaged both by its enemies and friends; but the King of France was engaged in a serious dispute with the Pope; his kingdom had just been placed under an interdict; he concluded peace with John, sacrificing, without remorse, the interests of Arthur, who found himself completely disinherited through the mutual understanding between his uncle and the King of France.
Meanwhile John had started out for Aquitaine, there to receive the homage of his subjects. He met, at one of the fêtes which were celebrated, Isabel, daughter of the Count of Angoulême and wife of the Count of Marche; she was remarkably beautiful, and as ambitious as she was beautiful. Her beauty attracted the king, and the ambition of the countess prompting her, she abandoned her husband to marry John Lackland, who himself had been married for ten years to the daughter of the Earl of Gloucester. An insurrection soon broke out in Aquitaine; it was insignificant at first, but at the beginning of the year 1202 Philip-Augustus, delivered from his quarrels with Pope Innocent III., stirred the flame of the rebellion in the southern provinces, organized an insurrection in Brittany, and suddenly took up Arthur's cause again, who had recently lost his mother. "You are aware of your rights," he said to the young prince, "do you wish to become king?" "Decidedly I do," said Arthur. "Very well then," said Philip, "there are two hundred knights, take them and march against your own provinces whilst I enter into Normandy." The Bretons rallied round their young duke, who advanced with his little army against the town of Mirebeau in Poitou, where his grandmother Eleanor was staying, whom his mother had taught him to hate. He hoped, by capturing her, to obtain better conditions from his uncle; but the old queen defended herself valiantly, and held the castle sufficiently long to allow her son to come to her assistance. A nobleman of the country delivered up the town to him on the night of the 31st of July, 1202, on King John's promising not to do any harm to his nephew. All the noblemen who supported the young duke, amongst whom was the Count of Marche, were made prisoners, and Prince Arthur himself was imprisoned in the Castle of Falaise, whence he was transported a short time afterwards to Rouen. There all trace of him is lost in history, and no information concerning him exists except vague and contradictory tradition. The most probable story relates that the king arrived by night with his esquire, Peter of Maulac, to see the unfortunate young prince in his dungeon, and that he took the latter with him in a little boat upon the Seine. The young man was in fear, and begged his uncle to spare his life; but John made a sign and De Maulac, after plunging his dagger into the prisoner's heart, threw his body overboard; but it is also said that De Maulac conceived a horror of the crime beforehand and refused to commit it, and that the king himself struck the fatal blow. It was on the 3rd of April, 1203. Rumors of the murder spread throughout France and England, adding fresh indignation to the hatred which John already inspired. The Bretons proclaimed Alice of Thouars, daughter of the Duchess Constance by her third husband, instead of Prince Arthur's sister, Eleanor, the Pearl of Brittany, who was in the power of her uncle, and was shut up by him in a convent at Bristol. The appeal of the Bretons to the liege-lord was listened to by Philip-Augustus; he summoned John, Duke of Normandy, to appear in Paris to be judged by his peers. Queen Eleanor had retired to Fontevraud, where she had taken the veil, overcome, it is said, with despair in consequence of her son's crime.
John had not answered Philip's summons: he was at Rouen, occupied with the festivities, while the King of France had entered Poitou, supported by the nobility, who had generally revolted in his favor, and was marching from there into Normandy. The Bretons had commenced the attack, and were advancing, pillaging the country. Many Normans joined them, so great was the horror inspired by the murder of Prince Arthur. The people had also organized an insurrection in Anjou and Maine, and Philip had taken possession of all the towns on his way when he effected a junction with the Bretons at Caen. "Let them go where they please," John would say in the midst of his revels, "I will take back in one day all that they have acquired with so much trouble." But the French army having appeared at Rodepont, in the neighborhood of Rouen, the King of England fled in great haste and recrossed the Channel in the month of December, 1203, in order to seek for succor.
The English reinforcements did not arrive; Rouen had defended itself valiantly; but the citizens had at length yielded in consequence of a famine; Verneuil had just been taken; Castle Gaillard, fortified by Richard Cœur-de-Lion, capitulated after a siege of seven months. The garrison had defended tower after tower; there no longer remained a single French knight, when the French soldiers at length destroyed the last portion of the ramparts. John had not lifted a finger to defend his dominions, and the King of France was regaining possession of his duchy of Normandy, which had been separated from his dominions for two hundred and ninety-two years. Brittany, Touraine, Anjou, Maine, and Poitou slipped from the grasp of the King of England; Aquitaine alone remained to him. King Philip, who was now satisfied, allowed himself to be persuaded by a legate sent by the Pope and concluded a truce of two years' duration with King John, which was to commence in the month of December, 1206.
The arms of his temporal enemies had triumphed. John Lackland was about to bring down upon himself the spiritual thunders; a conflict had arisen between the king and the chapter of Canterbury about the election of an archbishop. The Pope settled the question by nominating Cardinal Stephen Langton, who was then at Rome, and whose merit was known to the pontiff. The monks of Canterbury recognized him, and John caused them to be driven from their cloisters by two knights, sword in hand. The Pope instructed the three bishops to pronounce an interdict in England, authorizing at the same time the English barons, who were, he knew, secretly discontented, to aid him in snatching their country from ruin. The bishops pronounced the terrible sentence, and at once left King John's dominions. The barons did not dare to rebel; the king had taken possession of a large number of children of the noblest families as hostages. He had sent Peter of Maulac to demand the sons of William of Braose, Lord of Bramber in Sussex. "By my faith," said the lady of the castle, "he did not take such care of his nephew that I should trust my children to him." Peter of Maulac made prisoners of the lady and her children, who died of hunger in their prison; Lord Bramber died of grief in consequence.
The interdict had lasted one year; the churches were closed. No more bell-ringing, no religious services, no marriages, no prayers over the graves; the baptism of newly born children and the administration of extreme unction were the only concessions made by the Church. In 1209, the Pope sent a bull of excommunication against the king; the blow was foreseen, and the approaches were so zealously guarded that the papal missive could not gain admission; but John knew that a sentence of deposition would follow that of excommunication; and this proceeding, although unproductive of practical results in itself, assumed a terrible degree of importance when it was known that King Philip-Augustus was ready to carry it into execution. It is related that at this time John, in despair at his struggle against the Church, conceived the idea of begging the assistance of the Mussulmans, and that he sent an embassy to the Emir El-Hassiz in Spain, proposing to embrace the religion of Islamism and to become the vassal of the Emir, if the latter would cross the Pyrenees, enter into France, and thus draw off the forces of King Philip. The Emir listened gravely, only giving vague answers. When the emissaries had retired, the Mussulman called back one of them, a priest "Tell me," he asked him, "in the name of the Lord, from whom you expect your salvation, what kind of man your king really is." "He is a tyrant who will soon feel the effects of his subjects' anger," replied the monk; and the Emir refused all King John's offers.
In spite of the Pope's discontent and John's terror thereat, the latter had carried on successfully some expeditions against the insurgents in Ireland and Wales, when, in 1213, Innocent III. at length proclaimed his deposition, absolving all his vassals from their oath of allegiance, and making an appeal to all Christian princes to dethrone an impious tyrant. Stephen Langton was sent to King Philip to promise forgiveness of all the latter's sins if he would carry out the sentence of the Holy See. The French army was already being formed; King John had obtained a signal success over his adversary's fleet, and he was at Dover surrounded by an army of sixty thousand men, ready to encounter the invaders if their sovereign would lead them; but John was afraid of his subjects, mistrusting their fidelity; and he shrank as usual from giving battle to the enemy. The Pope's legate, Pandulph, came and met him at Dover. He represented to the king in the most terrible colors the strength of the French army, the discontent of the barons, and the anger of the exiles; the little courage that remained to the degenerate Plantagenet faded away from his heart. He was, besides, pursued by the recollection of a prediction of Peter the Hermit of Wakefield, which ran: "Before the day of the Ascension the king will have lost his crown." John resolved rather to drag it through the mire than to relax his hold of it.
The legate was a skilful diplomatist; before making public the result of his negotiations with the king, he demanded that all the exiled priests should be allowed to return with Langton at their head; and he also exacted an assurance that the clergy and laity would be indemnified for the losses which they had sustained through the interdict. The king signed this agreement on the 13th of May, 1213, and four barons affixed their seals to it. On the 14th John was engaged all day in private conference with the legate.
On the morning of the 15th of May the king rose early and went to the church of the Templars at Dover; a great crowd had already assembled there, and John, kneeling and clasping the hand of the legate in his own, swore in a loud clear voice an oath of allegiance to the Holy See. At the same time he placed in the hands of the pontiff's ambassador a document declaring that he, John, king of England and Ireland, in expiation of his sins against God and the Holy Church, without being constrained thereto by force or by the fear of the interdict, but of his own free will and with the consent of his barons, ceded to the Holy Pope Innocent and to his heirs and successors forever, the kingdom of England and dependency of Ireland, to be held by himself John and by his successors as a fief of the Holy Church, by paying an annual sum of a thousand marks of silver. At the same time the king offered a purse as an earnest of his submission. Pandulph threw it on the ground, trampling the money disdainfully under foot, but he accepted the crown which John had relinquished, and for five days it remained in his keeping. The feast of the Ascension had passed,—the king caused the Hermit of Wakefield to be tied to the tail of an untamed horse as a punishment for his predictions; but the people maintained that Peter had not been mistaken, because King John himself gave up his crown.
Scarcely had the legate accomplished his mission in England when he recrossed the sea to Philip's camp at Boulogne, announcing to the latter that the states of his enemy would for the future form part of the dominions of St. Peter, and that the King of France no longer had permission to invade them. "But," said Philip, "I have spent enormous sums of money in the preparations for war at the Pope's bidding, and on his having granted remission of my sins." He resolved to carry on the expedition, and was preparing to set sail, when a quarrel with the Count of Flanders caused him to turn his arms in that direction. The English fleet came to the assistance of the Count, and gained a brilliant victory over the vessels of Philip, who, finding himself deprived of the means of transport and revictualling, was obliged to renounce, for the time being, his expedition against England.
John had called all his subjects to arms; but when the barons met him at Portsmouth they refused to embark in the ships until the king had allowed the exiles whom he had called back to re-enter the country. Langton was hateful in the eyes of John, who looked upon him as the cause of the first dispute with Rome; but he was obliged to yield, and the archbishop and the monks of Canterbury once more set foot on English soil; the kiss of peace was exchanged, and John embarked, reckoning on the support of the barons. He arrived at Jersey, but the noblemen had not followed him, pleading that the period of their service was at an end, and they met at St. Alban's under the presidency of Chief-Justicier Fitz-Piers, a man of low origin, whose marriage with the Countess of Essex had placed him in a position which he maintained by reason of his ability. They had already published a series of royal declarations demanding the observance of the old laws, when John, furious at the desertion of his vassals, returned, pillaging and burning down everything on his way. The Archbishop of Canterbury came to him. "You are not fulfilling your oath, Sire," said he; "your vassals should be judged by their peers, and not coerced by arms." "Pay attention to your Church," cried the king angrily, "and leave me to govern the kingdom." Langton threatened to excommunicate all the agents of the royal vengeance, and John ended by summoning the barons to appear before him.
Langton, on the other hand, had convoked them at London. When the king entered the audience chamber, the cardinal held in his hand a parchment document. It was the charter of King Henry I.; this was neither the first nor the last charter which England received since the Conquest. William the Conqueror, in 1071, had guaranteed to his barons, by a charter, the performance of a contract entered into between them, promising to reform the abuses which had been pointed out to him, and securing to the Saxons the maintenance of the laws of Edward the Confessor. In 1101, King Henry I. had lately been proclaimed King of England; the Duke Robert was claiming the throne by virtue of his seniority. In order to secure the support of the Norman, as well as the Saxon barons, Henry had convoked in London a general assembly and signed a fresh charter, almost similar to his brother's. It was this document which Archbishop Langton had found, and which he was bringing to the barons assembled in London, like their ancestors, not, as of old, to receive a charter, but to force one upon the king.
King Stephen had also made the same promises, endowing the Church likewise with a charter setting forth its rights. Finally, Henry II., in 1154, had renewed the charters of King Stephen, and had caused a copy of the document to be deposited in all the churches; there is one of them remaining now. Cœur-de-Lion did not sign any charter, but that of John Lackland was destined to be glorious and powerful for ever afterwards under the title of Magna Charta. The barons swore to observe the injunctions of Henry I.'s charter, which had been presented to them by Langton, to remain faithful to one another, and to secure their liberties or to die defending them. This was on the 25th of August, 1213.
The Pope had abandoned the cause of English liberty on receiving homage from King John; the interdict had been raised, and the hostile forces of King Philip were gathering in all directions. The Emperor of Germany, the Count of Flanders, and the Count of Boulogne called the King of England to their aid. John sent William Longsword, earl of Salisbury, his half-brother, to the camp of the allies, and marched in person against Brittany, but he did not come to blows with the heir to the throne of France, Prince Louis, who had been sent forward by his father, on the 27th of July, while the latter was waging war against the confederates at Bouvines. On the 19th of October, John signed a five years' truce, and returned to England furious, humiliated, and resolved to revenge himself upon his English subjects for all the reverses of fortune which he had suffered on the Continent. Fitz-Piers, whom John feared and detested, was dead. The king burst into laughter on learning this news. "God's teeth!" he cried; "this is the first time that I have felt myself king and sovereign of England." But Langton was the real chief of the conspiracy; the support which the Pope lent to King John had not for a single moment shaken the fidelity of the archbishop to the cause of the barons: they again met, on the 20th of November, at Bury St. Edmund's, and, placing their hands upon the altar, they swore one after another, that if the king refused to grant the just rights which they claimed, they would withhold their allegiance, and wage war against him until he should have granted their demands by a charter sealed with the royal seal.
Christmas-day arrived; the king found himself alone at Worcester, his barons not having presented themselves to do homage to him. John retired in great haste to London, and took refuge in the fortress of the Templars. The barons followed him there this time in larger numbers than he cared for, and on the day of the Epiphany they haughtily presented their requests to him. John eyed the faces which surrounded him, and which bore an inflexible and resolute expression, both in the case of the priests and the warriors. He turned pale. "Give me until Easter to reflect upon all this," he said. Before consenting, the barons stipulated that Cardinal Langton, the Bishop of Ely, and the Earl of Pembroke should become sureties that the king would satisfy their claims upon the day mentioned by him. They knew the value of John Lackland's promises. Scarcely had they left, when he threw himself under the protection of the Church, renouncing all the prerogatives of the throne in the choice of ecclesiastical dignitaries, and begging the assistance of the Pope, who wrote to Langton, but with no result. At length, John formally assumed the cross, on the 2nd of February, hoping thus to avoid fulfilling his promises to the English barons. He did not yet fully understand his subjects.
On Easter-day, the confederates had met together in large numbers at Stamford; they sent a deputation to the king, who was at Oxford. When Langton read aloud the claims of the barons, John angrily exclaimed, "And why do they not also ask for my crown? By God's teeth! I will not grant liberties which would make a slave of me." The Pope's legate, who was there, maintained that Langton ought to excommunicate the confederates. "The intentions of the Holy Father have been misunderstood," said the archbishop calmly; "if the mercenary followers of the king do not soon leave the kingdom, whose ruin they are accomplishing, it is they whom I will excommunicate." The barons then styled themselves the army of God and of the Holy Church, and, placing Robert Fitz-Walter at their head, they marched against Northampton Castle. The resistance there was so actively carried on that the siege had to be raised, and the barons advanced towards Bedford. The position of affairs at this time was critical, and it was imperatively necessary to know whether the citizens of the towns would support the noble insurrectionists. Bedford opened its gates, and the confederates took the road to London; they arrived there on the morning of the 24th of May. The people received them joyfully, and good order was maintained in the Army of the Holy Church. The barons issued a proclamation, calling under their banners all the knights who had hitherto remained aloof from the contest. The king found himself unsupported, all the nobility of the kingdom having risen against him. He yielded therefore, at least for a time, to urgent necessity; he sent the Earl of Pembroke to the barons assembled in London to assure them that he was quite ready to grant the privileges and liberties which they claimed, and asking on what day and at what place they would arrange matters with him. "On the 15th of June, at Runnymede," replied the barons.
On the 15th of June all the noblemen of England were there. "It is not necessary to name them," says the chronicle, "for they consisted of all the nobility of the country." Fitz-Walter was at their head; the king was accompanied by the legate, by the Grand-Master of the Templars, by eight bishops brought by Langton, and by twelve barons, of whom the Earl of Pembroke was the chief. The king's followers, with the exception of the legate and the Templar, were as devoted to the liberties of England as the confederate noblemen.
John did not put in any claim or make any objection; with an amount of alacrity, which must have appeared suspicious to far-seeing observers, he signed the charter which was presented to him, and the great seal was affixed to it. The first real token of English liberty had been acquired; the first stone of the noble edifice of the Constitution was laid; the conditions were well defined; and the rights and interests of the clergy as well as those of the feudal nobility and of the merchants and citizens who had supported the barons in their enterprise were carefully provided for. Effectual guarantees were secured; the necessity for causing persons who were arrested or punished to be tried first of all in a court of justice, the establishment of regular assizes, the maintenance of the integrity of justice, all formed part of the fundamental rights claimed by the barons, who also required the disbanding of the mercenary troops, and the formation of a committee of twenty-five members entrusted with the task of seeing to the fulfilment of all the clauses of the compacts, the non-fulfilment of which gave the barons the right of waging war with the king until their grievances should be completely redressed. During two months the barons were to retain possession of the city of London.
All these precautions were powerless, however, against treachery; scarcely had the triumphant confederates left Runnymede when King John flew into a terrible passion, rolling on the ground and cursing the traitors who had dared to reduce him to slavery. The mercenary troops, whom he was obliged, according to Magna Charta, to disband, encouraged him in his anger and his plans for revenge. John called fresh reinforcements to his aid. After the treaties had been violated war broke out; the barons prepared for it; a tournament, which had been announced, was decided to be held nearer to London, and several gatherings had already taken place when the thunderbolt which John had invoked fell upon the heads of the English nobility. The Pope declared Magna Charta to be void, holding that it was illegitimate, having been obtained by force, and he commanded Langton to dissolve any confederation under pain of being excommunicated. The archbishop set out for Rome, in order to obtain a revocation of this sentence, and the war commenced in England with the siege of Rochester. The place was defended by D'Albiney, a member of the council of the twenty-five. After a resistance, which lasted during two months, the garrison, having come to the end of their resources, at length opened the gates. John desired to hang the brave defenders of the town; the chief of his free bands, Sauvery of Mauléon, surnamed the Bloody, opposed his determination. "The war is only beginning, Sire," said he, "if you commence by hanging your barons, your barons will end by hanging us." The knights' lives were spared, and the men-at-arms only were executed.
King John's Anger After Signing Magna Charta.
Langton had failed in his mission at Rome, and had been deposed from his see; the barons were excommunicated, and the city of London placed under an interdict, but the confederates took no notice of the two sentences. "The Pope had been misguided," they said, "and had meddled in the temporal affairs of England, which do not concern him, as the spiritual domain alone belongs to St. Peter and his successors."
John however had become possessed of two large armies of mercenary troops of Brabantines and of freelances, who willingly executed the sanguinary orders of their chief; one corps was sent to pursue their work of ravaging the counties of the East and the Centre, the other marched towards the North under the command of the king, repulsed into Scotland the young King Alexander, who had crossed the frontier to lend his aid to the barons, and burnt down and desolated the buildings in York, Northumberland, and Cumberland. Everywhere the barons, in retiring, would lay waste their houses and fields; everywhere the king burnt down whatever he found standing; but he was still advancing, while the confederates were retreating. They at length found themselves shut up in the city of London; all their castles had fallen into the hands of the tyrant, who had made a present of them to his followers, to Satan's guards, as the people called them. The families of the confederates were at the mercy of King John. The barons resolved upon their course of action, a bitter one, that of seeking aid abroad, and accordingly sent a deputation to Philip-Augustus, proposing to give the crown of England to his son Prince Louis, if he would come to their help with an army. His arrival, it was thought, would immediately thin the ranks of King John's supporters, for they were mostly Frenchmen, and would be unwilling to fight against their own countrymen.
Philip-Augustus only wanted a pretext to meddle in the affairs of England. He agreed to the proposals of the barons, not, however, without requiring hostages as a guarantee of good faith; and in spite of threats from the Pope, who forbade either the father or the son to invade a fief of the Holy Church, Prince Louis set sail in the month of July with a large army, raised chiefly through the personal efforts of his wife, Blanche of Castile, a niece of King John, in whose name Louis put forth his claim to the crown of England. John's fears did not wait for the landing of the French troops; he had left Dover, and had repaired to Bristol, where the legate awaited him. Prince Louis landed at Sandwich, and, almost without striking a blow, he marched to London, which city he entered on the 2nd of June, 1216. The entire population came to meet him, and, after having offered up a prayer to St. Paul, he received homage from the barons and citizens, promising to govern them according to their laws, to protect their rights, and to restore their property to them. The satisfaction was universal: the counties surrounding London submitted willingly to Prince Louis; the oppressed inhabitants of the North revolted. A large number of John's mercenary troops deserted him, to return to their homes or to rally round the standard of France; the nobility who had become reconciled to the king, in the presence of the reverses sustained by the national cause, abandoned him to join their old friends; and, lastly, Pope Innocent III. was just dead (16th July), and hence the powerful support of Rome was taken from him. John had only the fortresses defended by his partisans remaining to him.
Meanwhile, Prince Louis was stopped at Dover Castle, and the English barons at Windsor Castle. In vain did they attack the massive walls with a machine which came from France, and which was called the "Malvoisine." Hubert de Burgh held his ground firmly at Dover, and the siege of Windsor had been raised; the confederates had hoped to surprise the king at Cambridge; but John had eluded them, and had proceeded to Lincoln, of which city he took possession. The prospects of the confederation were not flourishing; the reinforcements, which had been sent from France, were checked by the English sailors who remained faithful to King John. Prince Louis displayed little activity, and treated his English allies in a haughty manner. He had already presented several estates to the noblemen who had accompanied him from France; one of them, the Viscount of Melun, was dead; and he had, it was said, confessed, when dying, that the intention of the French people, when their prince should be on the throne, was to treat the English like men who had shown themselves untrustworthy by reason of their treachery to their sovereign. Distrust and discord had entered into the allied camps; several barons opened negotiations with King John. The latter's position was ameliorating; he had just left Wisbeach, and desired to proceed to Cross-Keys, on the south of the Wash, when, on arriving at the ford, he beheld the rising tide suddenly engulf the long line of wagons which were carrying his luggage, his treasures, and his provisions. The troops had already crossed the river, and were in safety, but the king became furious at witnessing such an irreparable loss; he arrived, exhausted with rage, at the convent of the Cistercian monks at Swineshead. No event, however dreadful, troubled King John while at table; he ate some peaches and drank some new ale—so immoderately in fact, that he fell ill on the morrow, and, thinking that he was poisoned by the monks, he caused himself to be taken to Newark. Death, the only enemy that John could not escape from, awaited him there. He sent for a priest, nominated his son Henry as his successor, and dictated a letter to the new Pope, Honorius, to recommend his children to the care of the Holy Church. The remembrance of his crimes did not seem to trouble him on his death-bed; perhaps he held himself absolved from all his sins by his allegiance to the Holy See. "I commit my soul to God and my body to St. Wulstan," he said. He then expired on the 18th of October, 1216. He was buried at Worcester, in the church of Saint Wulstan. Death had at length delivered England of the cowardly and faithless tyrant whom she had for a long while submitted to, then vanquished, and against whom the country was still struggling in defence of Magna Charta, which, after the lapse of more than six centuries, remains the basis of English liberties.
King John was buried when his young son was crowned at Gloucester, on the 28th of October, 1216, by the Pope's legate. He was ten years of age at the time, and his feeble hands confirmed without resistance the gift which his father had made to Rome of the kingdom of England. It was the vassal of the Church, who in the month of November, 1216, was confided to the care of the Earl of Pembroke, the most formidable of the barons who had remained faithful to King John, by reason of his orderly and prudent character, for he was as devoted to the liberties of his country as the barons who had mustered round the banner of Prince Louis. He was nominated "Protector" of the kingdom and of the king, and his first care was to make a revision of Magna Charta; he eliminated the temporary articles; confirmed a great number of clauses; others remained pending until the raising of a more numerous army; and the earl directed all his efforts against the French prince and his foreign adherents. The favors and good graces of the Protector drew to him all the barons who were deserting the French prince, and they were becoming every day more numerous. Their enmity had died out at the death of King John; the child who had just been crowned was their legitimate sovereign, descended from the kings whom they had loved and served. Louis saw his army rapidly decreasing; in consequence of the vigorous resistance of Hubert de Burgh, he had been unable to obtain possession of Dover Castle, which he had been besieging for some time. In vain had they endeavored to seduce him from his duty, by urging that the king to whom he had sworn allegiance was dead. "The king has left children," he answered, and Louis raised the siege to return to London, which still remained true to him. An armistice soon allowed him to go to France to collect reinforcements; but, in his absence, the insolence of Enguerrand of Coucy, whom he had left at the head of affairs, was spreading discontent, and the forces of the national party sprang up so rapidly that the prince, attacked on the sea by the sailors of the Cinque Ports, found some difficulty in returning to England. An army corps under the command of the Count of Perche was defeated by the Protector in the very streets of Lincoln, and the anathemas of Rome began to pour down upon Prince Louis and his adherents, who were excommunicated in a mass.
Louis was shut up in London, surrounded by his enemies; he asked for help from France, but his father, Philip-Augustus, would not become concerned in a quarrel with the Pope, and did not dare to act openly in his son's favor. It was Louis's wife, Blanche of Castile, who succeeded in raising considerable forces, which she sent to him under the care of a chief of adventurers named Eustace the Monk, because he had escaped from his monastery. The French fleet met Hubert de Burgh on the high seas. The struggle began. Eustace the Monk was defeated, and afterwards beheaded on the poop of his vessel. Hubert de Burgh returned triumphantly to Dover with his prizes.
This last check was the death-blow of Louis's cause in England. On the 11th of September, 1217, a treaty of peace was signed at Lambeth, granting easy conditions to the French prince, and a full pardon to his English adherents. The Protector had no other desire than to put an end to the struggle and to see England delivered from the foreigners; in spite of its prolonged resistance the city of London even obtained a confirmation of its privileges. Louis set sail in the middle of September, and his more distinguished partisans were kindly received at King Henry's court; Magna Charta was again confirmed, not, however, without some modifications favorable to the royal prerogative; the clauses relating to the protection of the forests were included in a special charter called the "Forest Charter," which rendered less severe the Norman legislation as to hunting and the edicts which related to it. The wisdom and moderation of Pembroke prevailed in the councils; the Queen-mother, Isabel, had fled from England in the midst of the confusion, and her first husband, the Count of Marche, had just been solemnly remarried to her; the legate remained with the young prince, and was instructed by the Pope to look after the interests of the vassal of the Church as well as those of the Suzerain mistress of England. Order seemed to have been re-established, when the Protector died (May, 1219), and the power which was afterwards divided between Hubert de Burgh and Pierre des Roches, bishop of Winchester, became a bone of contention to the rivals and the barons attached to either party. Habits of insubordination, which had been developed during the long struggle against arbitrary power, had borne their fruit. England was rent asunder by internal quarrels which it was not even hoped would end on the king's attaining his majority, for Henry III. grew up without becoming a man. Absorbed in the love of luxury and pageantry, in the songs of minstrels and the masterpieces of the sculptors or of the artists with whom he loved to surround himself, he appeared to take no interest in his affairs, and displayed no war-like inclinations, but left the barons to quarrel among themselves and the Italian priests to devour the substance of his kingdom, without manifesting any desire to find a remedy. France was suffering from the evils of a minority. Louis VII., who had succeeded Philip-Augustus in 1223, had reigned but a short time, and Louis IX. was not sixteen years of age when, in 1230, the King of England, who was of age two years before, made a raid on Brittany at the instigation of some noblemen of Normandy, Brittany, and Poitou. But Blanche of Castile possessed a more vigorous spirit and a stronger arm than King Henry III.; she herself led her son to the war, and, in spite of the turbulency of the French barons, who were always eager to shake off their yoke, she saw her efforts crowned with success. Several towns belonging to the King of England opened their gates to her, while King Henry was losing time and wasting his resources on fêtes and tournaments at Nantes. He started back for England in the month of October, deeply humiliated, leaving his ally, the Duke of Brittany, at the foot of the throne of Louis IX., who granted him the pardon which he had humbly solicited with a rope round his neck. The Parliament (this Norman name was beginning to be used) which was convoked at Henry's return, refused to grant any subsidies, alleging that, thanks to the folly and imprudence of the king, his barons were no richer than himself.
Hubert de Burgh had for some years past triumphed over his rival, Pierre des Roches, who was obliged to retire into private life; but the ill success of the expedition to France had ended by causing a feeling against the minister among many of the nobility, who were jealous of his power. Pierre des Roches reappeared at the court, and soon afterwards formal accusations were made against Hubert, most of them frivolous, and attesting nothing but his fidelity to his king, whom he had served and defended during so many years. But Henry III. was not in a position to protect his friend, and would scarcely recognize him; he was prejudiced against Hubert, who took refuge at Merton Abbey. The king had ordered that he should be arrested there; but the Archbishop of Dublin reminded him of the privilege of sanctuary and obtained a passport, which authorized the fallen minister to retire to his residence and prepare his defence. On the faith of this promise Hubert de Burgh set out to meet his wife, the King of Scotland's sister, at Bury St. Edmunds; but he was attacked on the way by a band of armed men sent by the king. Hubert was in bed at the time; but fled half-naked into the parish church, and, seizing in one hand the crucifix and in the other the host, he awaited his enemies upon the steps of the altar. He was dragged into the churchyard, and on the refusal of a blacksmith, who declared that he would rather die than chain down the defender of Dover Castle, was tied to a horse and conducted to the Tower of London. The violation of the consecrated spot, however, excited the public indignation to such a degree that the king found himself obliged to send his prisoner to Brentwood church, which he caused to be surrounded by palings and trenches, thus compelling Hubert to give himself up voluntarily. Having been again imprisoned in the Tower, the earl was deprived of all his property and afterwards languished for one year in the Castle of Devizes. He contrived to escape, and, having been rescued by his friends at the very moment when his enemies were upon him, he regained a certain amount of power; but he no longer aspired to the dangerous position of prime minister, which his rival, Pierre des Roches, had lost in consequence of his manœuvres and excesses. Being satisfied with the recovery of his liberty and a portion of his property, Hubert left the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Edmund Rich, in undisturbed possession of the supreme authority. This prelate, like his predecessor Stephen Langton, was a patriotic statesman, who contrived for the moment to conquer, by his good sense and wisdom, the aversion which the king manifested towards charters, and the restlessness of the barons, who were always inclined to maintain by force of arms the privileges which they had gained with so much difficulty.
A fresh element of discord had sprung up between the king and his people. Henry had married in 1236 Eleanor of Provence, sister of Margaret, wife of Louis IX., King of France. A large number of Gascons and Provençals had followed her to the court; the queen was accompanied by four uncles, young brothers of her mother, the Princess of Savoy. The king immediately conceived a firm friendship for them; the Bishop of Valence became prime minister; his brother Boniface was promoted to the archbishopric of Canterbury, which Edmund Rich had abandoned, weary and disgusted, to retire into a monastery; and the two other brothers were also provided for. Even this was not sufficient; the Queen-mother, now Countess of Marche, sent to the court of England the four sons whom she had borne to Hugh de Lusignan, and the wealth and honors which the king lavished on the brothers attracted towards them a large number of adventurers. The king found himself without money; all the ecclesiastical benefices were reserved for Italians, by virtue of the Pope's authority over the country. Parliament always insisted on the departure of the strangers as a condition of granting subsidies; but the king, immediately on obtaining the money, forgot his promises, and even his oaths, and his frivolous followers laughed at Magna Charta and the importance which the barons attached to it. "What are the English laws to us?" they would ask.
By these laws the king was compelled to ask his people for the means, which he wasted so foolishly on feasts and extravagance. Each day the Parliament became more reluctant to grant them. The Queen-mother, offended, she said, by the Countess of Poitou, sister-in-law of Louis IX., urged her son to declare war with France, assuring him that the old vassals of his house were eager to gather round his standard. The English barons refused the necessary subsidies, saying that the truce agreed to between the two kingdoms still remained in force. Henry was not of a warlike disposition; but his mother was importunate; he raised some money, and set sail for France with three hundred knights. A certain number of malcontents soon joined him, commanded by the Count of Marche, whom his wife sent to the war, as she had already sent her son. King Louis IX. had taken the field with forces superior to those of the English. The two young monarchs met near the castle of Taillebourg, in Saintonge, on the banks of the Charente. Louis, at the head of his forces, attacked the bridge defended by the English troops, and for a moment withstood almost unaided their united efforts. His signal courage gained the day; the bridge was taken, the English were routed, and the King of England escaped in company with his brother, to whom he owed his safety. The two brothers took refuge in Saintes. A second battle was fought on the morrow, under the walls of the town, and the English were again defeated. The Count of Marche surrendered, and King Henry, flying across Saintonge, embarked at Blaye, leaving the decorations of his chapel and the money remaining in his coffers in the hands of the enemy. It was to the moderation of King Louis IX. and to the scruples of his sensitive conscience that the English were indebted for a truce of five years.
The barons, humiliated and disgraced, although they had not been engaged in the quarrel with France, claimed the right of nominating the chief justicier, the chancellor, and several other officers of the crown. The king refused, and the Parliament only allowed him what was strictly necessary on the occasion of the marriage of his eldest daughter to the King of Scotland. Henry had conceived a hatred of parliaments. In order to manage without them he had recourse to every expedient by which he could raise money; he exacted enormous fines, tortured the Jews, and begged presents of all his vassals. "God gave us this child, but the king sold him to us," said a wag at the birth of one of the princes. Henry even, on one occasion, sold a portion of the royal table-plate. He was advised to sell everything, but the difficulty was to find buyers. "The citizens of London will buy anything," cried the king bitterly. "By my faith! if the treasures of Augustus were for sale, the citizens would make the purchase. These villains live like barons, while we are in want of the principal necessaries of life." The king detested the city of London, but he levied as many taxes as possible upon its inhabitants, instructing the persons of his household to obtain all the things necessary for his entertainments without paying for them, and continually claiming gifts under the most frivolous pretexts from the citizens. In 1253, King Henry had come to an end of all his resources and expedients. He was compelled to convoke a Parliament, declaring that he was anxious to assume the cross, and go and deliver the tomb of Jesus Christ from the hands of the infidels. The barons had often seen this pious pretext made use of, and were not to be deceived by it; they were, besides, accustomed in private life, to hear the same determination announced, in order to set aside the most solemn obligations. Before making any grant, they exacted a new and solemn ratification of their liberties. On the 3rd of May the king proceeded to Westminster Hall; the barons were assembled there, and all the bishops were standing with tapers in their hands. They offered one to the king. "I am not a priest," he said, and refused it. The Archbishop of Canterbury stepped forward, and uttered the sentence of excommunication against all those who should either directly or indirectly violate the charters of the kingdom. As he finished speaking, all the prelates threw aside their tapers, which were extinguished at their feet, and the priests cried: "May the soul of him who may incur this sentence be extinguished in a like manner in hell." The king, uplifting his hand, uttered this oath: "May God help me to preserve intact all these charters, as I am a Christian, as I am a knight, and as I am a king, anointed and crowned." Scarcely had he received the subsidies, when he started on an expedition to Guienne, which was threatened by the intrigues of Alphonse, king of Castile. The quarrel was soon settled, and a marriage decided upon between Prince Edward, Henry's elder brother, and Princess Eleanor, daughter of Alphonse. But the king kept this happy consummation secret, in order to obtain fresh subsidies from his English subjects, under the pretence of continuing the war. He only came back to England when he found himself, as usual, reduced to beggary.
The king's want of political foresight was as conspicuous as his prodigality and weakness. The King of Sicily, Frederick II., had been dead some time (1250). He had been excommunicated, and Pope Innocent IV. had claimed his kingdom as a fief of the Holy See. Frederic's son. Prince Conrad, supported generally by the people, was resisting this pretension by force of arms, and the Pope was casting about for a foreign prince who might be disposed to take up the quarrel. He offered the crown of Sicily to Richard, brother of the King of England, whose immense fortune, derived from the Cornish mines, rendered him more powerful even than King Henry himself; but he refused the tempting bait, although he was quite ready to be seduced, some months later, by the hope of gaining possession of the empire. The Pope then offered the kingdom of Sicily to the King of England for his second son Edmund, and the monarch joyfully accepted the offer, without troubling himself about the demands of his subjects or the state of his finances. The Pope was borrowing of the Lombards and the Venetians, and raising troops in his name; but the Holy See was a hard and urgent creditor. Innocent IV. soon demanded back the money which he had spent, and ordered the English clergy to lend the necessary funds to the king. The clergy refused; the king levied enormous taxes on the abbeys and churches. The legate sent to England to recover the money encountered on all sides the most violent opposition. "I would rather die than pay so much money," said the Bishop of Worcester. "The king and the Pope are stronger than we," said the Bishop of London; "but if I am deprived of my mitre, I shall be able to wear a helmet." The legate returned, convinced that a storm was about to burst over England.
It was on the 2nd of May, 1258; famine reigned throughout the kingdom. Henry III. had been reduced to the necessity of convoking Parliament. When he entered Westminster Hall, the barons were awaiting him there, clad in their armor. On hearing the clanking of arms at his arrival, the king suddenly turned pale. "Am I a prisoner?" he said nervously. "No," said Roger Bigod, earl of Norfolk; "but your foreign favorites and your own extravagance have reduced the country to such an abject state of misery, that we demand that the power may for the future be vested in a committee of bishops and barons, in order that they may root out all the abuses, and make good laws for us." One of the Lusignans began to protest. The king agreed, without any reservation, to the demands of the barons, who promised, in return, to help him pay his debts, and to support the pretensions of his son in Italy, provided that he would give proofs of his sincerity at the reassembling of Parliament, which was to be convoked at Oxford.
King Henry And His Barons.