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The History of England From the Norman Conquest to the Death of John
The Great Charter
by Adams, George Burton
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The king of France may have been acting, as he would have the world
believe, as the instrument of heaven to punish the enemy of the Church,
but he did not learn with any great rejoicing of the conversion of John
from the error of his ways. Orders were sent him at once to abstain from
all attack on one who was now the vassal of the pope, and he found it
necessary in the end to obey, declaring, it is said, that the victory was
after all his, since it was due to him that the pope had subdued England.
The army and fleet prepared for the invasion, he turned against his own
vassal who had withheld his assistance from the undertaking, the Count of
Flanders, and quickly occupied a considerable part of the country. Count
Ferdinand in his extremity turned to King John and he sent over a force
under command of his brother, William Longsword, Earl of Salisbury, which
surprised the French fleet badly guarded in the harbour of Damme and
captured or destroyed 400 ships. If Philip had any lingering hope that he
might yet be able to carry out his plan of invasion, he was forced now to
abandon it, and in despair of preserving the rest of his fleet, or in a
fit of anger, he ordered it to be burned.
The Archbishop of Canterbury landed in England in July, accompanied
by five of the exiled bishops, and a few days later met the king. On
the 20th at Winchester John was absolved from his excommunication,
swearing publicly that he would be true to his agreement with
the Church, and taking an additional oath in form somewhat like the
coronation oath, which the archbishop required or which perhaps the
fact of his excommunication made necessary, "that holy Church and her
ministers he would love, defend, and maintain against all her enemies
to the best of his power, that he would renew the good laws of his
predecessors, and especially the laws of King Edward, and annul all
bad ones, and that he would judge all men according to just judgments
of his courts and restore to every man his rights." It is doubtful
if we should regard this as anything more than a renewal of the
coronation oath necessary to a full restoration of the king from the
effects of the Church censure, but at any rate the form of words seems
to have been noticed by those who heard it, and to have been referred
to afterwards when the political opposition to the king was taking
share, a sure sign of increasing watchfulness regarding the mutual
rights of king and subjects.79
The king was no longer excommunicate, but the kingdom was still under the
interdict, and the pope had no intention of annulling it until the
question of compensation for their losses was settled to the satisfaction
of the bishops and others whose lands had been in the hands of the king.
That was not an easy question to settle. It was not a matter of arrears
of revenue merely, for John had not been content with the annual income
of the lands, but he had cut down forests and raised money in other
extraordinary ways to the permanent injury of the property. In the end
only a comparatively small sum was paid, and in all probability a full
payment would have been entirely beyond the resources of the king, but at
the beginning John seems to have intended to carry out his agreement in
good faith. There is no reason to doubt the statement of a chronicler of
the time that on the next day after his absolution the king sent out
writs to all the sheriffs, ordering them to send to St. Albans at the
beginning of August the reeve and four legal men from each township of
the royal domains, that by their testimony and that of his own officers
the amount of these losses might be determined. This would be to all
England a familiar expedient, a simple use of the jury principle, with
nothing new about it except the bringing of the local juries together in
one place, nor must it be regarded as in any sense a beginning of
representation. It has no historic connexion with the growth of that
system, and cannot possibly indicate more than that the idea of uniting
local juries in one place had occurred to some one. We have no evidence
that this assembly was actually held, and it is highly probable that it
was not. Nor can anything more be said with certainly of writs which were
issued in November of this year directing the sheriffs to send four
discreet men from each county to attend a meeting of the council at
Oxford. John himself was busily occupied with a plan to transport the
forces he had collected into Poitou to attack the king of France there,
and he appointed the justiciar, Geoffrey Fitz Peter, and the Bishop of
Winchester, Peter des Roches, as his representatives during his absence.
These two held a great council at St. Albans in August at which formal
proclamation was made of the restoration of good laws and the abolition
of bad ones as the king had promised, the good laws now referred to being
those of Henry I; and all sheriffs and other officers were strictly
enjoined to abstain from violence and injustice for the future, but no
decision was reached as to the sum to be paid the clergy.
In the meantime John was in difficulties about his proposed expedition to
Poitou. When he was about to set out, he found the barons unwilling. They
declared that the money they had provided for their expenses had all been
used up in the long delay, and that if they went, the king must meet the
cost, while the barons of the north refused, according to one account,
because they were not bound by the conditions of their tenure to serve
abroad. In this they were no doubt wrong, if services were to be
determined, as would naturally be the case, by custom; but their refusal
to obey the king on whatever ground so soon after he had apparently
recovered power by his reconciliation with the Church is very noteworthy.
In great anger the king embarked with his household only and landed in
Jersey, as if he would conquer France alone, but he was obliged to
return. His wrath, however, was not abated, and he collected a large
force and marched to the north, intending to bring the unwilling barons
to their accustomed obedience; but his plan was interrupted by a new and
more serious opposition. Archbishop Stephen Langton seems to have
returned to England determined to contend as vigorously for the rights of
the laity as for those of the Church. We are told by one chronicler that
he had heard it said that on August 25, while the king was on the march
to the north, Stephen was presiding over a council of prelates and barons
at St. Paul's, and that to certain of them he read a copy of Henry I's
coronation charter as a record of the ancient laws which they had a right
to demand of the king. There may be difficulties in supposing that such
an incident occurred at this exact date, but something of the kind must
have happened not long before or after. If we may trust the record we
have of the oath taken by John at the time of his absolution, it suggests
that the charter of Henry I was in the mind of the man who drew it up.
Now, at any rate, was an opportunity to interfere in protection of
clearly defined rights, and to insist that the king should keep the oath
which he had just sworn. Without hesitation the archbishop went after the
king, overtook him at Northampton, where John was on the 28th, and
reminded him that he would break his oath if he made war on any of his
barons without a judgment of his court. John broke out into a storm of
rage, as he was apt to do; "with great noise" he told the archbishop to
mind his own business and let matters of lay jurisdiction alone, and
moved on to Nottingham. Undismayed, Langton followed, declaring that he
would excommunicate every one except the king who should take part in the
attack, and John was obliged again to yield and to appoint a time for the
court to try the case.
The attempt to settle the indemnity to be paid the clergy dragged on
through the remainder of the year, and was not then completed. Councils
were held at London, Wallingford, and Reading, early in October,
November, and December respectively, in each of which the subject was
discussed, and left unsettled, except that after the Reading council
the king paid the archbishop and the bishops who had been exiled 15,000
marks. At the end of September a legate from the pope, Cardinal
Nicholas, landed in England, and to him John repeated the surrender of
the crown and his homage as the pope's vassal. Along with the question
of indemnity, that of filling up the vacant sees was discussed, and
with nearly as little result. The local officers of the Church were
disposed to make as much as possible out of John's humiliation and the
chapters to assert the right of independent election. The king was not
willing to allow this, and pope and legate inclined to support him. On
October 14 the justiciar, Geoffrey Fitz Peter, died. John's exclamation
when he heard the news, as preserved in the tradition of the next
generation,--"When he gets to hell, let him greet Hubert Walter," and,
as earlier in the case of Hubert himself, "Now by the feet of God am
I first king and lord of England,"--and, more trustworthy perhaps,
the rapid decline of events after Geoffrey's death towards civil war
and revolution, lead us to believe that like many a great judge he
exercised a stronger influence over the actual history of his age than
appears in any contemporary record.
It was near the middle of February, 1214, before John was able to carry
out in earnest his plan for the recovery of Poitou. At that time he
landed at La Rochelle with a large army and a full military chest, but
with very few English barons of rank accompanying him. Since the close of
actual war between them Philip had made gains in one way or another
within the lands that had remained to John, and it was time for the Duke
of Aquitaine to appear to protect his own, to say nothing of any attempt
to recover his lost territories. At first his presence seemed all that
was necessary; barons renewed their allegiance, those who had done homage
to Philip returned and were pardoned, castles were surrendered, and John
passed through portions of Poitou and Angoulème, meeting with almost no
resistance. A dash of Philip's, in April, drove him back to the south,
but the king of France was too much occupied with the more serious danger
that threatened him from the coalition in the north to give much time to
John, and he returned after a few days, leaving his son Louis to guard
the line of approach to Paris. Then John returned to the field, attacked
the Lusignans, took their castles, and forced them to submit. The Count
of La Marche was the Hugh the Brown from whom years before he had stolen
his bride, Isabel of Angoulème, and now he proposed to strengthen the
new-made alliance by giving to Hugh's eldest son Isabel's daughter
Joanna. On June 11 John crossed the Loire, and a few days later entered
Angers, whose fortifications had been destroyed by the French. The
occupation of the capital of Anjou marks the highest point of his success
in the expedition. To protect and complete his new conquest, John began
at once the siege of La Roche-au-Moine, a new castle built by William des
Roches on the Loire, which commanded communications with the south.
Against him there Louis of France advanced to raise the siege. John
wished to go out and meet him, but the barons of Poitou refused,
declaring that they were not prepared to fight battles in the field, and
the siege had to be abandoned and a hasty retreat made across the river.
Angers at once fell into the hands of Louis, and its new ramparts were
destroyed.
It was about July first that Louis set out to raise the siege of La
Roche-au-Moine, and on the 27th the decisive battle of Bouvines was
fought in the north before John had resolved on his next move. The
coalition, on which John had laboured so long and from which he hoped so
much, was at last in the field. The emperor Otto IV, the Counts of
Flanders, Boulogne, Holland, Brabant, and Limburg, the Duke of Lorraine,
and others, each from motives of his own, had joined their forces with
the English under the Earl of Salisbury, to overthrow the king of France.
To oppose this combination Philip had only his vassals of northern
France, without foreign allies and with a part of his force detached to
watch the movements of the English king on the Loire. The odds seemed to
be decidedly against him, but the allies, attacking at a disadvantage the
French army which they believed in retreat, were totally defeated near
Bouvines. The Earl of Salisbury and the Counts of Flanders and Boulogne
with many others were taken prisoners, and the triumph of Philip was as
complete as his danger had been great. The popular enthusiasm with which
the news of this victory was received in northern France shows how
thorough had been the work of the monarchy during the past century and
how great progress had been made in the creation of a nation in feeling
and spirit as well as in name under the Capetian king. The general
rejoicing was but another expression of the force before which in reality
the English dominion in France had fallen.
The effects of the battle of Bouvines were not confined to France nor to
the war then going on. The results in German history--the fall of Otto
IV, the triumph of Frederick II--we have no occasion to trace. In English
history its least important result was that John was obliged to make
peace with Philip. The treaty was dated on September 18. A truce was
agreed upon to last for five years from the following Easter, everything
to remain in the meantime practically as it was left at the close of the
war. This might be a virtual recognition by John of the conquests which
Philip had made, but for him it was a much more serious matter that the
ruin of his schemes left him alone, unsupported by the glamour of a
brilliant combination of allies, without prestige, overwhelmed with
defeat, to face the baronial opposition which in the past few years had
been growing so rapidly in strength, in intelligent perception of the
wrongs that had been suffered, and in the knowledge of its own power.
About the middle of October John returned to England to find that the
disaffection among the barons, which had expressed itself in the refusal
to serve in Poitou, had not grown less during his absence. The interdict
had been removed on July 2, John having given security for the payment of
a sum as indemnity to the Church which was satisfactory to the pope, but
the rejoicing over this relief was somewhat lessened by the fact that the
monastic houses and the minor clergy were unprovided for and received no
compensation for their losses. The justiciar whom the king had appointed
on the eve of his departure, the Bishop of Winchester, Peter des Roches,
naturally unpopular because he was a foreigner and out of sympathy with
the spirit of the barons, had ruled with a strong hand and sternly
repressed all expression of discontent, but his success in this respect
had only increased the determination to have a reckoning with the king.
In these circumstances John's first important act after his return
brought matters to a crisis. Evidently he had no intention of abandoning
any of his rights or of letting slip any of his power in England because
he had been defeated in France, and he called at once for a scutage from
those barons who had not gone with him to Poitou. This raised again the
question of right, and we are told that it was the northern barons who
once more declared that their English holdings did not oblige them to
follow the king abroad or to pay a scutage when he went, John on his side
asserting that the service was due to him because it had been rendered to
his father and brother. In this the king was undoubtedly right. He could,
if he had known it, have carried back his historical argument a century
further, but in general feudal law there was justification enough for the
position of the barons to warrant them in taking a stand on the point if
they wished to join issue with the king. This they were now determined to
do. We know from several annalists that after John's return the barons
came to an agreement among themselves that they would demand of the king
a confirmation of the charter of Henry I and a re-grant of the liberties
contained in it. In one account we have the story of a meeting at Bury
St. Edmunds, on pretence of a pilgrimage, in which this agreement was
made and an oath taken by all to wage war on the king if he should refuse
their request which they decided to make of him in form after Christmas.
Concerted action there must have been, and it seems altogether likely
that this account is correct.
The references to the charter of Henry I in the historians of the time
prove clearly enough the great part which that document played at the
origin of the revolution now beginning. It undoubtedly gave to the
discontented barons the consciousness of legal right, crystallized their
ideas, and suggested the method of action, but it is hardly possible to
believe that a simple confirmation of this charter could now have been
regarded as adequate. The charter of Henry I is as remarkable a document
for the beginning of the twelfth as the Great Charter is for the
beginning of the thirteenth century, but no small progress had taken
place in two directions in the intervening hundred years. In one
direction the demands of the crown--we ought really to say the demands of
the government--were more frequent, new in kind, and heavier in amount
than at the earlier date. The reorganization of the judicial and
administrative systems had enlarged greatly the king's sphere of action
at the expense of the baron's. All this, and it forms together a great
body of change, was advance, was true progress, but it seemed to the
baron encroachment on his liberties and denial of his rights, and there
was a sense in which his view was perfectly correct. It was partly due to
these changes, partly to the general on-going of things, that in the
other direction the judgment of the baron was more clear, his view of his
own rights and wrongs more specific than a hundred years before, and, by
far most important of all, that he had come to a definite understanding
of the principle that the king, as lord of his vassals, was just as much
under obligation to keep the law as the baron was. Independent of these
two main lines of development was the personal tyranny of John, his
contemptuous disregard of custom and right in dealing with men, his
violent overriding of the processes of his own courts in arbitrary arrest
and cruel punishment. The charter of Henry I would be a suggestive model;
a new charter must follow its lines and be founded on its principles, but
the needs of the barons would now go far beyond its meagre provisions and
demand the translation of its general statements into specific form.
According to the agreement they had made the barons came together at
London soon after January 1, 1215, with some show of arms, and demanded
of the king the confirmation of the charter of Henry I. John replied that
the matter was new and important, and that he must have some time for
consideration, and asked for delay until the octave of Easter, April 26.
With reluctance the barons made this concession, Stephen Langton, William
Marshal, and the Bishop of Ely becoming sureties for the king that he
would then give satisfaction to all. The interval which was allowed him
John used in a variety of attempts to strengthen himself and to prepare
for the trial of arms which he must have known to be inevitable. On the
21st of the previous November he had issued a charter granting to the
cathedral churches and monasteries throughout England full freedom of
election, and this charter he now reissued a few days after the meeting
with the barons. If this was an attempt to separate the clergy from
the cause of the barons, or to bring the archbishop over wholly to his
own side, it was a failure. About the same time he adopted a familiar
expedient and ordered the oath of allegiance to himself against all men
to be taken throughout the country, but he added a new clause requiring
men to swear to stand by him against the charter.80 Since the discussion
of the charter had begun a general interest in its provisions had been
excited, and the determination to secure the liberties it embodied had
grown rapidly, so that now the king quickly found, by the opposition it
aroused, that in this peculiar demand he had overshot the mark, and he was
obliged to recall his orders. Naturally John turned at once to the pope,
who was now under obligation to protect him from his enemies, but his
envoy was followed by Eustace de Vescy, who argued strongly for the
barons' side. The pope's letters to England in reply did not afford
decisive support to either party, though more in favour of the king's, who
was exhorted, however, to grant "just petitions" of the barons. On Ash
Wednesday John went so far as to assume the cross of the crusader, most
likely to secure additional favour from the pope, who was very anxious to
renew the attempt that had failed in the early part of his reign, no doubt
having in mind also the personal immunities it would secure him. For
troops to resist the barons in the field the king's reliance was chiefly,
as it had been during all his reign, on soldiers hired abroad, and he made
efforts to get these into his service from Flanders and from Poitou,
promising great rewards to knights who would join him from thence, as well
as from Wales.
John's preparations alarmed the barons, and they determined not to wait
for April 26, the appointed day for the king's answer. They came together
in arms at Stamford, advanced from thence to Northampton, and then on to
Brackley to be in the neighbourhood of the king, who was then at Oxford.
Their array was a formidable one. The list recorded gives us the names of
five earls, forty barons, and one bishop, Giles de Braóse, who had family
wrongs to avenge; and while the party was called the Northerners, because
the movement had such strong support in that part of England, other
portions of the country were well represented. Annalists of the time
noticed that younger men inclined to the side of the insurgents, while
the older remained with the king. This fact in some cases divided
families, as in the case of the Marshals, William the elder staying with
John, while William the younger was with the barons. That one abode in
the king's company does not indicate, however, that his sympathies in
this struggle were on that side. Stephen Langton was in form with the
king and acted as his representative in the negotiations, though it was
universally known that he supported the reforms asked for. It is probable
that this was true also of the Earl of Pembroke. These two were sent by
John to the barons to get an exact statement of their demands, and
returned with a "schedule," which was recited to the king point by point.
These were no doubt the same as the "articles" presented to the king
afterwards, on which the Great Charter was based. When John was made to
understand what they meant, his hot, ancestral temper swept him away in
an insane passion of anger. "Why do they not go on and demand the kingdom
itself?" he cried, and added with a furious oath that he would never make
himself a slave by granting such concessions.
When the barons received their answer, they decided on immediate war. As
they viewed the case, this was a step justified by the feudal law. It was
their contention that the reforms they demanded had been granted and
recognized as legal by former kings. In other words, their suzerain was
denying them their hereditary rights, acknowledged and conceded by his
predecessors. To the feudal mind the situation which this fact created
was simple and obvious. They were no longer bound by any fealty to him.
It was their right to make war upon him until he should consent to grant
them what was their due. Their first step was to send to the king the
formal diffidatio prescribed for such cases, withdrawing their fealty
and notifying him of their intention to begin war. Then choosing Robert
Fitz Walter their commander, under the title of Marshal of the Army of
God and Holy Church, they began the siege of Northampton, but were unable
to take it from lack of siege machinery. On May 17 the barons, having in
the meantime rejected several unsatisfactory proposals of the king,
entered London at the request of the chief citizens, though the tower was
still held by John's troops. The great strength of the barons at this
time as against the king was not, however, their possession of London, or
the forces which had taken the field in their cause, but the fact that
John had practically no part of England with him beyond the ground
commanded by the castles still held by his foreign soldiers. Pleas ceased
in the exchequer, we are told, and the operations of the sheriffs,
because no one could be found who would pay the king anything or show him
any obedience, and many of the barons, who up to this time had stood with
him, now joined the insurgents. No help could be had for some time from
the pope. Langton refused to act at the king's request and excommunicate
his enemies. There was nothing for John to do but to yield and trust that
time would bring about some change to relieve him of the obligations he
must assume.
On June 8 John granted a safe conduct to representatives of the barons to
negotiate with him to hold good until the 11th, and later extended the
period until the 15th. He was then at Windsor, and the barons from London
came to Staines and camped in the field of Runnymede. The "Articles" were
presented to the king in form, and now accepted by him, and on the basis
of them the Great Charter was drawn up and sealed on June 15, 1215.
In the history of constitutional liberty, of which the Great Charter is
the beginning, its specific provisions are of far less importance than
its underlying principle. What we to-day consider the great safeguards of
Anglo-Saxon liberty are all conspicuously absent from the first of its
creative statutes, nor could any of them have been explained in the
meaning we give them to the understanding of the men who framed the
charter. Consent to taxation in the modern sense is not there; neither
taxation nor consent. Trial by jury is not there in that form of it which
became a check on arbitrary power, nor is it referred to at all in the
clause which has been said to embody it. Parliament, habeas corpus, bail,
the independence of the judiciary, are all of later growth, or existed
only in rudimentary form. Nor can the charter be properly called a
contract between king and nation. The idea of the nation, as we now hold
it, was still in the future, to be called into existence by the
circumstances of the next reign. The idea of contract certainly pervades
the document, but only as the expression of the always existent contract
between the suzerain and his vassals which was the foundation of all
feudal law. On the other hand, some of the provisions of our civil
liberty, mainly in the interest of individual rights, are plainly
present. That private property shall not be taken for public use without
just compensation, that cruel and unusual punishments shall not be
inflicted nor excessive fines be imposed, that justice shall be free and
fair to all, these may be found almost in modern form.
But it is in none of these directions that the great importance of the
document is to be sought. All its specific provisions together as
specific provisions are not worth, either in themselves or in their
historical influence, the one principle which underlies them all and
gives validity to them all--the principle that the king must keep the
law. This it was that justified the barons in their rebellion. It was to
secure this from a king who could not be bound by the ordinary law that
the Great Charter was drawn up and its clauses put into the form in which
they stand. In other words, the barons contended that the king was
already bound by the law as it stood, and that former kings had
recognized the fact. In this they were entirely correct. The Great
Charter is old law. It is codification, or rather it is a selection of
those points of the existing law which the king had constantly violated,
for the purpose of stating them in such form that his specific pledge to
regard them could be secured, and his consent to machinery for enforcing
them in case he broke his pledge. The source of the Great Charter, then,
of its various provisions and of its underlying principle, must be sought
in the existing law that regulated the relations between the king and the
barons--the feudal law.
From beginning to end the Great Charter is a feudal document. The most
important of its provisions which cannot be found in this law, those
which may perhaps be called new legislation, relate to the judicial
system as recently developed, which had proved too useful and was
probably too firmly fixed to be set aside, though it was considered by
the barons to infringe upon their feudal rights and had been used in the
past as an engine of oppression and extortion. In this one direction the
development of institutions in England had already left the feudal system
behind. In financial matters a similar development was under rapid way,
but John's effort to push forward too fast along that line was one cause
of the insurrection and the charter, and of the reaction in this
particular which it embodies. As a statement of feudal law the Great
Charter is moderate, conservative, and carefully regardful of the real
rights of the king. As a document born in civil strife it is remarkable
in this respect, or would be were this not true of all its progeny in
Anglo-Saxon history. Whoever framed it must have been fair-minded and
have held the balance level between king and insurgents. Its provisions
in regard to wardship and marriage have been called weak. They are not
weak; they are just, and as compared with the corresponding provisions of
the charter of Henry I they are less revolutionary, and leave to the king
what belonged to him historically--the rights which all English kings had
exercised and which in that generation Philip of France also had
repeatedly exercised, even against John himself.
But the chief feature of the Great Charter apart from all its specific
enactments, that on which it all rests, is this, that the king has no
right to violate the law, and if he attempts to do so, may be constrained
by force to obey it. That also is feudal law. It was the fundamental
conception of the whole feudal relationship that the suzerain was bound to
respect the recognized rights of his vassal, and that if he would not, he
might be compelled to do so; nor was it in England alone that this idea
was held to include the highest suzerain, the lord paramount of the
realm.81 Clause 61 which to the modern mind seems the most astonishing
of the whole charter, legalizing insurrection and revolution, contains
nothing that was new, except the arrangement for a body of twenty-five
barons who were to put into orderly operation the right of coercion. It
is certainly not necessary to show by argument the supreme importance of
this principle. It is the true corner-stone of the English constitution.
It was the preservation of this right, its development into new forms
to meet the changing needs of the state, that created and protected
constitutional liberty, and it was the supreme service of the Great
Charter, far beyond any accomplished by any one clause or by all specific
clauses together, to carry over from feudalism this right and to make it
the fostering principle of a new growth in which feudalism had no
share.82
It may be that the barons believed they were demanding nothing in the
Great Charter that had not been granted by former kings or that the king
was not bound by the law to observe. It may be possible to prove that
this belief was historically correct in principle if not in specific
form; but the king could not be expected to take the same view of the
case. He had been compelled to renounce many things that he had been
doing through his whole reign, and some things, as he very well knew,
that had been done by his father and brother before him. He may honestly
have believed that he had been forced to surrender genuine royal rights.
He certainly knew that if he faithfully kept its provisions, the task of
raising the necessary money to carry on the government, already not easy,
would become extremely difficult if not impossible. It is not likely that
John promised to be bound by the charter with any intention of keeping
his promise. He had no choice at the moment but to yield, and if he
yielded, the forces of the barons would probably scatter, and the chances
favour such a recovery of his strength that with the help of the pope he
could set the charter aside. At first nothing could be done but to
conform to its requirements, and orders were sent throughout the country
for the taking of the oath in which all men were to swear to obey the
twenty-five barons appointed guardians of the charter. Juries were to be
chosen to inquire into grievances, and some of the foreign troops were
sent home. Suspicions began to be felt, however, in regard to the
intentions of the king during the negotiations concerning details which
followed the signing of the charter. A council called to meet at Oxford
about the middle of July, he refused to attend. Nor were provocations and
violations of the spirit of the charter wanting on the part of the
barons. Certain of the party, indeed, "Trans-Humbrians" they are called,
probably the extreme enemies of the king, had withdrawn from the
conference at Runnymede, and now refused to cease hostilities because
they had had no part in making peace. The royal officers were maltreated
and driven off, and the king's manors plundered.
By August John was rapidly preparing for a renewal of the war. He sent
out orders to get the royal castles ready for defence. His emissaries
were collecting troops in Flanders and Aquitaine. Philip Augustus's Count
of Britanny, Peter of Dreux, was offered the honour of Richmond, which
former counts had held, if he would come to John's aid with a body of
knights. Money does not seem to have been lacking through the struggle
that followed, and John's efforts to collect mercenary troops were
abundantly successful. Dover was appointed as the gathering-place of his
army, both as a convenient landing-place for those coming from abroad and
for strategic reasons. As it became evident that the charter had not
brought the conflict to an end, the barons were obliged to consider what
their next step should be. In clause 61 of the charter in regard to
coercing the king, they had bound themselves not to depose him, but the
arrangements made in that clause were never put into operation, nor could
they be. There was only one way of dealing with a king who obstinately
insisted on his rights, as he regarded them, against the law, and that
was by deposition. The leaders of the barons now decided that this step
was necessary, and an effort was made to unite all barons in taking it,
but those who had been with the king before refused, and some members of
the baronial party itself were not willing to go so far, nor were the
clergy. The pope was making his position perfectly plain. Before the
meeting at Runnymede he had ordered the excommunication of the disturbers
of the king and kingdom; and when this sentence was published later, the
barons might pretend that the king was the worst disturber of the
kingdom, but they really knew what the pope intended. In September the
Bishop of Winchester and Pandulf, representing the pope, suspended
Archbishop Langton because of his refusal to enforce the papal sentences.
By the end of the month the news reached England of Innocent's bull
against the charter itself, declaring it null and void, and forbidding
the king to observe it or the barons to require it to be kept under
penalty of excommunication. Doubtless John expected this from the pope,
and if his own view of the charter were correct, Innocent's action would
be entirely within his rights. No vassal had a right to enter into any
agreement which would diminish the value of his fief, and John had done
this if the rights that he was exercising in 1213 were really his. It was
apparently about this time that the insurgent barons determined to
transfer their allegiance to Louis of France. We are told that they
selected him because, if he were king of England, most of John's
mercenaries would leave his service since they were vassals of France;
but Louis was really the only one available who could be thought to
represent in any way the old dynasty, and it would certainly be
remembered that he had been proposed for the place in 1213. Negotiations
were begun to induce him to accept, but in the meantime John had secured
a sufficient force to take the offensive, and was beginning to push the
war with unusual spirit and vigour. A part of his force he sent to
relieve Northampton and Oxford, besieged by the barons, and he himself
with the rest set out to take Rochester castle which was held against
him. Repulsed at first, he succeeded in a second attempt to destroy the
bridge across the Medway to cut off communication with London, and began
a regular siege which he pressed fiercely. The garrison was not large,
but they defended themselves with great courage, having reason to fear
the consequences of yielding, and prolonged the siege for seven weeks.
Even after the keep had been in part taken by undermining the wall they
maintained themselves in what was left until they were starved into
surrender. It was only the threat that his mercenaries would leave him
for fear of reprisals that kept John from hanging his prisoners. During
this siege the barons in London had remained in a strange inactivity,
making only one half-hearted attempt to save their friends, seemingly
afraid to meet the king in the field, and accused of preferring the
selfish security and luxury of the capital. This was their conduct during
the whole of the winter while their strongholds were captured and their
lands devastated in all parts of England by the forces of their enemy,
for John continued his campaign. Soon after the capture of Rochester he
marched through Windsor to the north of London and, leaving a part of his
army under the Earl of Salisbury to watch the barons and to lay waste
their lands in that part of the country, he passed himself through the
midlands to the north, destroying everything belonging to his enemies
that he could find and not always distinguishing carefully between
friends and foes. England had not for generations suffered such a
harrying as it received that winter. So great was the terror created by
the cruelties practised that garrisons of the barons' castles, it is
said, fled on the news of the king's approach, leaving the castles
undefended to fall into his hands. The march extended as far as Scotland.
Berwick was taken and burnt, and the parts of the country about were laid
waste in revenge for the favour which King Alexander had shown the
barons. In March, 1216, John returned to the neighbourhood of London,
leaving a new track of devastation further to the east, and bringing with
him a great store of plunder.
During the winter the barons had kept up their negotiations with Louis,
and an agreement had finally been made. They had pledged themselves to
do homage to Louis and accept him as king, and had sent to France
twenty-four hostages "of the noblest of the land" in pledge of their
fidelity. Louis in return sent over small bodies of men to their aid and
promised himself to follow in person in the spring. To this step the
barons were indeed driven, unless they were prepared to submit, because
of the strength the king had gained since the signing of the charter and
their own comparative weakness. Why this change had taken place so soon
after the barons had been all-powerful cannot now be fully explained, but
so far as we can see the opinion of a contemporary that they would have
been overcome but for the aid of the French is correct. Against the
invasion of Louis, John had two lines of defence, the pope and the fleet.
Innocent, who had once favoured a transfer of the English crown to Louis,
must now oppose it. When he learned how far preparations for the
expedition had gone, he sent a legate, Cardinal Gualo, to France to
forbid any further step. Gualo was received by Philip and his son at
Melun on April 25. There before the king and the court the case was
argued between the cardinal and a knight representing Louis, as if it
were a suit at law to be decided in the ordinary way. Louis's case was
skilfully constructed to deprive the legate of his ground of
interference, but his assertions were falsehoods or misrepresentations.
John had been condemned to death for the murder of Arthur--the first
occasion on which we hear of this--and afterwards rejected by the barons
of England for his many crimes, and they were making war on him to expel
him from the kingdom. John had surrendered the kingdom to the pope
without the consent of the barons, and if he could not legally do this,
he could by the attempt create a vacancy, which the barons had filled by
the choice of Louis. The legate, apparently unable to meet these
unexpected arguments, asserted that John was a crusader and therefore
under the protection of the apostolic see. For Louis it was answered that
John had been making war on him long before he took the cross and had
continued to do so since, so that Louis had a right to go on with the
war. The legate had no answer to this, though it was false, but he
prohibited Louis from going and his father from allowing him to go.
Louis, denying the right of his father to interfere with his claims in a
land not subject to the king of France, and sending an embassy to argue
his case before the pope, went on with his preparations. Philip Augustus
carefully avoided anything that would bring him into open conflict with
Innocent and threw the whole responsibility on his son.
Louis landed in England in the Isle of Thanet on May 21. John had
collected a large and strong fleet to prevent his crossing, but a storm
just at the moment had dispersed it and left the enemy a clear passage.
John, then at Canterbury, first thought to attack the French with his
land forces, but fearing that his hired troops would be less loyal to a
mere paymaster than to the heir and representative of their suzerain in
France, he fell back and left the way open for Louis's advance to London.
Soon after landing, Louis sent forward a letter to the Abbot of St.
Augustine's in Canterbury, who, he feared, was about to excommunicate
him. In this letter which was possibly intended also for general
circulation, he repeated the arguments used against the legate with some
additional points of the same sort, and explained the hereditary claim of
his wife and his own right by the choice of the barons. The document is a
peculiar mixture of fact and falsehood, but it was well calculated to
impose on persons to whom the minor details of history would certainly be
unknown. Rochester castle fell into the hands of the French with no real
resistance; and on June 2, Louis was welcomed in London with great
rejoicing, and at once received the homage of the barons and of the
mayor. Louis's arrival seemed to turn the tide for the moment against the
king. He retreated into the west, while the barons took the field once
more, and with the French gained many successes in the east and north,
particularly against towns and castles. On June 25, Louis occupied
Winchester. Barons who had been until now faithful to the king began to
come in and join the French as their rapid advance threatened their
estates; among them was even John's brother, the Earl of Salisbury. Early
in July Worcester was captured and Exeter threatened, and John was forced
back to the borders of Wales. This marks, however, the limit of Louis's
success. Instead of pushing his advance rapidly forward against the one
important enemy, the king himself, he turned aside to undertake some
difficult sieges, and made the further mistake of angering the English
barons by showing too great favour to his French companions. Dover castle
seemed to the military judgment of the French particularly important as
"key of England," and for more than three months Louis gave himself up to
the effort to take it.
For the first of these months, till the end of August, John remained
inactive on the borders of Wales. The death of Innocent III made no
change in the situation. His successor Honorius III continued his English
policy. With the beginning of September the king advanced as if to raise
the siege of Windsor, but gave up the attempt and passed on east into
Cambridgeshire, ravaging horribly the lands of his enemies. The barons
pursued him, and he fell back on Lincoln from which as a centre he raided
the surrounding country for more than a fortnight. On October 9, he
marched eastwards again to Lynn which, like most of the towns, was
favourable to him, and there he brought on a dysentery by overeating.
From that time his physical decline was rapid. His violent passions,
utterly unbridled, tore him to pieces more and more fiercely as he
recognized his own loss of strength and learned of one misfortune after
another. He would not rest, and he would not listen to counsel. On the
11th he went on to Wisbech, and on the next day he insisted on crossing
the Wash, without knowing the crossing or regarding the tide. He himself
passed in safety, but he lost a part of his troops and all his baggage
with his booty, money, and jewels. At night at Swineshead abbey, hot with
anger and grief, and feverish from his illness, he gave way to his
appetite again, as always, and ate to excess of peaches and new cider.
After a rest of a day he pushed on with difficulty to Sleaford. There
messengers reached him from his garrison in Dover asking his permission
to surrender if he could not relieve them at once, and the news brought
on a new passion of anger. He insisted on going one stage further to
Newark, although he had already recognized that his end was near. There
three days later, on the 19th of October, he died. The teachings of the
Church which he had slighted and despised during his life he listened to
as his end drew near, and he confessed and received the communion. He
designated his son Henry, now nine years old, as his heir, and especially
recommended him to the care of the Earl of Pembroke, and appointed
thirteen persons by name to settle his affairs and to distribute his
property according to general directions which he left. At his desire he
was buried in Worcester cathedral and in the habit of a monk.
It has already been suggested that the reigns of Richard and John form a
period of transition to a new age. That period closes and the new age
opens with the granting of the Great Charter and the attempted
revolution which followed. The reign of John was the culmination of a
long tendency in English history, most rapid since the accession of his
father, towards the establishment of an absolutism in which the rights
of all classes would disappear and the arbitrary will of the king be
supreme. The story of his reign should reveal how very near that result
was of accomplishment. A monarchy had been forming in the last three
reigns, and very rapidly in the reign of John, capable of crushing any
ordinary opposition, disregarding public opinion and traditional rights,
possessing in the new judicial system, if regarded as an organ of the
king's will alone, an engine of centralization, punishment, and
extortion, of irresistible force, and developing rapidly in financial
matters complete independence of all controlling principles. Though the
barons were acting rather from personal and selfish motives, freedom for
all classes depended on the speedy checking of this steady drift of two
generations. The reigns of Richard and John may be called transitional
because it is in them that the barons came to see clearly the principles
on which successful resistance could be founded and the absolutist
tendency checked. The embodiment of these principles in permanent form
in the Great Charter to be accepted by the sovereign and enforced in
practice, introduces an age, the age of constitutional growth, new in
the history of England, and in the form and importance of its results
new in the history of the world.
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