What was of supreme importance was the lesson that there was something higher, stronger, and more enduring than the will of the most powerful earthly despot.
The life of the Carthusian, St. Hugh, whom Henry II himself caused to be elected Bishop of Lincoln in 1186, forms an admirable pendant to that of St. Thomas. It may be noted in the first place, in view of the outcry raised a little later against the provision of foreigners to English sees, that St. Hugh was a Burgundian, who even at the end of his life hardly understood the language of the people. But no man ruled his diocese better, no man was more beloved alike by his own secular canons of Lincoln and by the numerous religious in his diocese; while, owing to his holiness, his fearlessness, and his merry humor, he was the only bishop who without yielding an inch of his high principles, preserved the respect and even the friendship of three such monarchs as Henry II, Richard Coeur de Lion, and John. Very memorable was his firm refusal in the national council to grant Richard an aid in knights and money for foreign warfare. Though the reign of Richard, like that of his predecessor Henry II, still continued to be a period of reform in law, it was also a period of unparalleled exactions in money. In this case the great Justiciar, Hubert Walter, who was also Archbishop of Canterbury, had made himself the instrument of the king's designs. Though all the temporal lords submitted, St. Hugh offered an uncompromising and successful resistance. "This", says Bishop Stubbs, "which was done not on ecclesiastical but on constitutional grounds, is an act which stands out prominently by the side of St. Thomas's protest against Henry's proposal to appropriate the sheriffs' share of Danegeld" (Select Charters, p. 28).
Richard's extreme need of money had no doubt been caused in part by his participation in the Crusades and by the huge ransom he had had to pay when captured on his way home by Duke Leopold of Austria. Englishmen, both now and at an earlier date, had played their part in the Crusades. Baldwin, Archbishop of Canterbury, who accompanied Richard, and who had been a most earnest preacher of the holy war, left his bones in Palestine, and Bishop Hubert Walter, who was destined to succeed him in the archbishopric, became the virtual commander of the English forces upon his death. But the Crusades exercised no great influence upon the national life of England. For our present purpose they are chiefly memorable as emphasizing the truth, so often ignored by Anglican writers, that medieval Christendom, while recognizing many different peoples and many different governments, conceived of the Church of God not as manifold, but as one. According to that "political theory of the Middle Age" which, founded by Gregory VII, had already imposed itself almost universally upon the speculative philosophy of Europe, the Church, embracing and controlling every form of civil government, was cosmopolitan and all-pervading. It was precisely the fact that she was not identified with any country or people, and that she appealed for her sanctions to forces outside of this visible world, that gave to the head of the Church his great position as the arbiter of nations. In principle no temporal ruler disputed the supremacy of the Vicar of Christ so long as the question remained in the abstract and so long as it was some other sovereign who was the sufferer. It was only when his own will was thwarted that active resistance was made, and then it was nearly always on some side issue, some technicality of law that the monarch and his advisers sought to evade the force of an unwelcome pronouncement. The very persistence with which monarchs at times sought to prevent the introduction into England of papal Bulls, provisions, or excommunications, was an acknowledgment rather than a repudiation of the papal authority; just as a man who barricades himself in his house that a writ may not be served on him is really giving proof of his supreme respect for the majesty of the law. This point of view is one that has carefully to be borne in mind in connection with the resistance to the papal exactions of the thirteenth century and with such apparently unfriendly legislation as the Statutes of Praemunire and Provisors which we shall have to consider later on.
The reign of John (1199-1216) was a time of terrible suffering for the country, but it had results of untold importance in the consolidation of England as a nation. The very loss of her foreign possessions—for in Henry II's day more than half France had recognized the suzerainty of the King of England—contributed to that result. But within Great Britain itself, ever since the Norman Conquest, the political constituents of the nation had been divided between two strongly marked parties more or less in opposition. The first, or feudal, element consisted of the great nobles of the Conquest, with their vassals and the influences they wielded. The tendency of this party was centrifugal or disruptive, and they looked upon the country and its people as their lawful prey. The second, which for convenience' sake may be called the national element, was less homogeneous. It comprised the king, the newer nobility which represented mainly the great officials of the Crown appointed under Henry I and Henry II, and with these the bishops and clergy almost to a man. Taken as a whole, all these recognized the advantage of a centralized government and sympathized with the native population, wishing their rights to be respected and justice to be done. Now it was the work of John's lawless and despotic rule, especially after the restraining influence of Hubert Walter was withdrawn by death, to break up this combination and to unite all parties against himself. In this the action of Pope Innocent III, culminating in the Interdict and the sentence of deposition pronounced against John, played a most vital part. It is needless to recapitulate the story of the election of Stephen Langton as Archbishop of Canterbury, over which John's quarrel with the Holy See practically began. But it is well to recall that Langton, who rendered such splendid service to the liberties of his country, and whose name is imperishably associated with Magna Charta, was the pope's own nominee, elected at his instance by the Christ Church monks who had been dispatched to Rome. Under stress of the Interdict and of John's exactions, the old feudal lords, the clergy, and the new "ministerial" nobility gradually drew together. John found that he had none but a few personal partisans upon whom he could count, and Philip of France with a great following threatened invasion to enforce the pope's sentence of deposition. Under these circumstances John made his submission to the legate, Pandulf, promising to receive all the exiled bishops and to make restitution for the injuries and losses the Church had sustained. A few days later, on May 13, the vigil of the Ascension, 1213, he went even further, for he surrendered his crown and kingdom into the hands of the legate to be received back from him as a fief which he and his successors were to hold of the pope for an annual rent of one thousand marks. It is not unnatural, perhaps, that this transaction should have been denounced by historians in the language of unmeasured indignation. Even Lingard in his day described it as "heaping everlasting infamy on the memory of John", but the considerations he puts forward in extenuation of the act have not been without weight with later students. It may be said to be now generally acknowledged that the idea of such a surrender probably did not originate with the pope, but with John himself (see Davis, "England under the Normans and Angevins", 1905, p. 368; Norgate, "John Lackland", 1902, p. 181). As the second of these two writers explains, there is a quite intelligible motive for
