more. He summoned John to appear before him as suzerain,
to answer the complaints of his Poitevin subjects, and when he
failed to plead declared war on him and declared his dominions
War with Phillip Augustus.
escheated to the French crown for non-fulfilment of his
feudal allegiance. He enlisted Arthur of Brittany in
his cause by recognizing him once more as the rightful
owner of all John’s continental fiefs save Normandy,
which he intended to take for himself. Philip then entered
Normandy, while Arthur led a Breton force into Anjou and
Poitou to aid the Lusignans. The fortune of war at first turned
in favour of the English king. He surprised his nephew while
he was besieging the castle of Mirebeau in Poitou, where the old
Queen Eleanor was residing. The young duke and most of his
chief supporters were taken prisoners (August 1, 1202). Instead
of using his advantage aright, John put Arthur in secret confinement,
and after some months caused him to be murdered. He
is said also to have starved to death twenty-two knights of Poitou
who had been among his captives. The assassination of his
nearest kinsman, a mere boy of sixteen, was as unwise as it was
cruel. It estranged from the king the hearts of all his French
subjects, who were already sufficiently disgusted by many
minor acts of brutality, as well as by incessant arbitrary taxation
and by the reckless ravages in which John’s mercenary troops
had been indulging. The French armies met with little or no
Loss of Normandy.
resistance when they invaded Normandy, Anjou and
Poitou. John sat inert at Rouen, pretending to take
his misfortunes lightly, and boasting that “what was
easily lost could be as easily won back.” Meanwhile Philip
Augustus conquered all western Normandy, without having to
fight a battle. The great castle of Château Gaillard, which
guards the Lower Seine, was the only place which made a strenuous
resistance. It was finally taken by assault, despite of the
efforts of the gallant castellan, Roger de Lacy, constable of
Chester, who had made head against the besiegers for six months
(September 1203–March 1204) without receiving any assistance
from his master. John finally absconded to England in December
1203; he failed to return with an army of relief, as he had
promised, and before the summer of 1204 was over, Caen, Bayeux
and Rouen, the last places that held out for him, had been
forced to open their gates. The Norman barons had refused to
strike a blow for John, and the cities had shown but a very
passive and precarious loyalty to him. He had made himself
so well hated by his cruelty and vices that the Normans, forgetting
their old hatred of France, had acquiesced in the conquest.
Two ties alone had for the last century held the duchy to the
English connexion: the one was that many Norman baronial
families held lands on this side of the Channel; the second was
the national pride which looked upon England as a conquered
appendage of Normandy. But the first had grown weaker as the
custom arose of dividing family estates between brothers, on the
principle that one should take the Norman, the other the English
parts of a paternal heritage. By John’s time there were comparatively
few landholders whose interests were fairly divided
between the duchy and the kingdom. Such as survived had now
to choose between losing the one or the other section of their
lands; those whose holding was mainly Norman adhered to
Philip; those who had more land in England sacrificed their
transmarine estates. For each of the two kings declared the
property of the barons who did not support him confiscated to
the crown. As to the old Norman theory that England was a
conquered land, it had gradually ceased to exist as an operative
force, under kings who, like Henry II. or Richard I., were neither
Norman nor English in feeling, but Angevin. John did not, and
could not, appeal as a Norman prince to Norman patriotism.
The successes of Philip Augustus did not cease with the
conquest of Normandy. His armies pushed forward in the south
also; Anjou, Touraine and nearly all Poitou submitted
to him. Only Guienne and southern Aquitaine held
out for King John, partly because they preferred a
Loss of Anjou, Touraine and
Poitou.
weak and distant master to such a strenuous and
grasping prince as King Philip, partly because they
were far more alien in blood and language to their French
neighbours than were Normans or Angevins. The Gascons were
practically a separate nationality, and the house of Capet had
no ancient connexion with them. The kings of England were
yet to reign at Bordeaux and Bayonne for two hundred and fifty
years. But the connexion with Gascony meant little compared
with the now vanished connexion with Normandy. Henry I.
or Henry II. could run over to his continental dominions in a
day or two days; Dieppe and Harfleur were close to Portsmouth
and Hastings. It was a different thing for John and his
successors to undertake the long voyage to Bordeaux, around
the stormy headlands of Brittany and across the Bay of Biscay.
Visits to their continental dominions had to be few and far
between; they were long, costly and dangerous when a French
fleet—a thing never seen before Philip Augustus conquered
Normandy—might be roaming in the Channel. The kings of
England became perforce much more home-keeping sovereigns
after 1204.
It was certainly not a boon for England that her present sovereign was destined to remain within her borders for the greater part of his remaining years. To know John well was to loathe him, as every contemporary chronicle bears witness. The two years that followed the loss of Normandy were a time of growing discontent and incessant disputes about taxation. The king kept collecting scutages and tallages, yet barons and towns complained that nothing seemed to be done with the money he collected. At last, however, in 1206, the king did make an expedition to Poitou, and recovered some of its southern borders. Yet, with his usual inconsequence, he did not follow up his success, but made a two years’ truce with Philip of France on the basis of uti possidetis—which left Normandy and all the territories on and about the Loire in the hands of the conqueror.
It is probable that this pacification was the result of a new
quarrel which John had just taken up with a new enemy—the
Papacy. The dispute on the question of free election,
which was to range over all the central years of his
reign, had just begun. In the end of 1205 Hubert
Quarrel
with the Papacy.
Walter, archbishop of Canterbury, had died. The
king announced his intention of procuring the election of John
de Gray, bishop of Norwich, as his successor; but, though his
purpose was well known, the chapter (i.e. the monks of Christ
Church, Canterbury) met secretly and elected their sub-prior
Reginald as archbishop. They sent him to Rome at once, to
receive confirmation from Pope Innocent III., whom they knew
to be a zealous champion of the rights of the Church. But John
descended upon them in great wrath, and by threats compelled
them to hold a second meeting, and to elect his nominee Gray,
in whose name application for confirmation was also made to the
pope. Innocent, however, seeing a splendid chance of asserting
his authority, declared both the elections that had taken place
invalid, the first because it had been clandestine, the second
because it had been held under force majeure, and proceeded
to nominate a friend of his own—Cardinal Stephen Langton, an
Englishman of proved capacity and blameless life, then resident
in Rome. He was far the worthiest of the three candidates, but
it was an intolerable invasion of the rights of the English crown
and the English Church that an archbishop should be foisted
on them in this fashion. The representatives of the chapter
who had been sent to Rome were persuaded or compelled to
elect him in the pope’s presence (Dec. 1206).
King John was furious, and not without good reason; he refused to accept Langton, whom he declared (quite unjustly) to be a secret friend of Philip of France, and sequestrated the lands of the monks of Canterbury. On this the pope threatened to lay an interdict on himself and his realm. The king replied by issuing a proclamation to the effect that he would outlaw any clerk who should accept the validity of such an interdict and would confiscate his lands. Despising such threats Innocent carried out his threat, and put England under the ban of the Church on the 23rd of March 1208.
In obedience to the pope’s orders the large majority of the English clergy closed their churches, and suspended the ordinary course of the services and celebration of the sacraments. Baptism
