and extreme unction only were continued, lest souls should
be lost; and marriages were permitted but not inside the walls
of churches. Foreseeing the wrath of the king against all who
obeyed the mandate from Rome, the larger number of the bishops
and many others of the higher clergy fled overseas to escape the
storm. Those who were bold enough to remain behind had much
to endure. John, openly rejoicing at the plunder that lay before
him, declared the temporalities of all who had accepted the interdict,
whether they had exiled themselves or no, to be confiscated.
His treasury was soon so well filled that he could dispense with
ordinary taxation. He also outlawed the whole body of the
clergy, save the timid remnant who promised to disregard the
papal commands.
Nothing proves more conclusively the strength of the Angevin
monarchy, and the decreasing power of feudalism, than that an
unpopular king like John could maintain his strife
with the pope, and suppress the discontents of his
subjects, for nearly five years before the inevitable
Character
of John’s
rule.
explosion came. Probably his long immunity was
due in the main to the capacity of his strong-handed justiciar
Geoffrey Fitz-Peter; the king hated him bitterly, but generally
took his advice. The crash only came when Geoffrey died in
1213; his ungrateful master only expressed joy. “Now by God’s
feet am I for the first time king of England,” he exclaimed, when
the news reached him. He proceeded to fill the vacancy with a
mere Poitevin adventurer, Peter des Roches, whom he had made
bishop of Winchester some time before. Indeed John’s few
trusted confidants were nearly all foreigners, such men as the
mercenary captains Gerard of Athies and Engelhart of Cigogné,
whom he made sheriffs and castellans to the discontent of all
Englishmen. He spent all his money in maintaining bands of
hired Brabançons and routiers, by whose aid he for some time
succeeded in terrorizing the countryside. There were a few
preliminary outbreaks of rebellion, which were suppressed with
vigour and punished with horrible cruelty. John starved to
death the wife and son of William de Braose, the first baron
who took arms against him, and hanged in a row twenty-eight
young boys, hostages for the fidelity of their fathers, Welsh
princes who had dabbled in treason. Such acts provoked rage
as well as fear, yet the measure of John’s iniquities was not full
till 1212. Indeed for some time his persistent prosperity provoked
the indignant surprise of those who believed him to be
under a curse. If his renewed war with Philip of France was
generally unsuccessful, yet at home he held his own. The most
astounding instance of his success is that in 1210 he found leisure
for a hasty expedition to Ireland, where he compelled rebellious
barons to do homage, and received the submission of more than
twenty of the local kinglets. It is strange that he came back to
find England undisturbed behind him.
His long-deserved humiliation only began in the winter of 1212–1213, when Innocent III., finding him so utterly callous as to the interdict, took the further step of declaring him deposed from the throne for contumacy, and handing over the execution of the penalty to the king John does homage to the pope. of France. This act provoked a certain amount of indignation in England, and in the spring of 1213 the king was able to collect a large army on Barham Down to resist the threatened French invasion. Yet so many of his subjects were discontented that he dared not trust himself to the chances of war, and, when the fleet of King Philip was ready to sail, he surprised the world by making a sudden and grovelling submission to the pope. Not only did he agree to receive Stephen Langton as archbishop, to restore all the exiled clergy to their benefices, and to pay them handsome compensation for all their losses during the last five years, but he took the strange and ignominious step of declaring that he ceded his whole kingdom to the pope, to hold as his vassal. He formally resigned his crown into the hands of the legate Cardinal Pandulf, and took it back as the pope’s vassal, engaging at the same time to pay a tribute of 1000 marks a year for England and Ireland. This was felt to be a humiliating transaction by many of John’s subjects, though to others the joy at reconciliation with the Church caused all else to be forgotten. The political effect of the device was all that John had desired. His new suzerain took him under his protection, and forbade Philip of France to proceed with his projected invasion, though ships and men were all ready (May 1213). John’s safety, however, was secured in a more practical way when his bastard brother, William Longsword, earl of Salisbury, made a descent on the port of Damme and burnt or sunk a whole squadron of the French transports. After this John’s spirits rose, and he talked of crossing the seas himself to recover Normandy and Anjou. But he soon found that his subjects were not inclined to follow him; they were resigned to the loss of the Angevin heritage, whose union with England brought no profit to them, however much it might interest their king. The barons expressed their wish for a peace with France, and when summoned to produce their feudal contingents pleaded poverty, and raised a rather shallow theory to the effect that their services could not be asked for wars beyond seas—against which there were conclusive precedents in the reigns of Henry I. and Henry II. But any plea can be raised against an unpopular king. John found himself obliged to turn back, since hardly a man save his mercenaries had rallied to his standard at Portsmouth. In great anger and indignation he marched off towards the north, with his hired soldiery, swearing to punish the barons who had taken the lead in the “strike” which had defeated his purpose. But the outbreak of war was to be deferred for a space. Archbishop Langton, who on assuming possession of his see had shown at once that he was a patriotic English statesman, and not the mere delegate of the pope, besought his master to hold back, and, when he refused, threatened to renew the excommunication which had so lately been removed. The old justiciar Geoffrey Fitz-Peter, now on his death-bed, had also refused to pronounce sentence on the defaulters. John hesitated, and meanwhile his enemies began to organize their resistance.
A great landmark in the constitutional history of England was reached when Langton assembled the leading barons, rehearsed to them the charter issued by Henry I. on his accession, and pointed out to them the rights and liberties therein promised by the crown to the Opposition of the barons. nation. For the future they agreed to take this document as their programme of demands. It was the first of the many occasions in English history when the demand for reform took the shape of a reference back to old precedents, and now (as on all subsequent occasions) the party which opposed the crown read back into the ancient grants which they quoted a good deal more than had been actually conceded in them. To Langton and the barons the charter of Henry I. seemed to cover all the customs and practices which had grown up under the rule of the bureaucracy which had served Henry II. and Richard I. A correct historical perspective could hardly be expected from men whose constitutional knowledge only ran back as far as the memory of themselves and their fathers. The Great Charter of 1215 was a commentary on, rather than a reproduction of, the old accession pledges of Henry I.
Meanwhile John, leaving his barons to discuss and formulate their grievances, pushed on with a great scheme of foreign alliances, by which he hoped to crush Philip of France, even though the aid of the feudal levies of England was denied him. He leagued himself with his nephewAlliance against France. the emperor Otto IV. (his sister’s son), and the counts of Flanders and Boulogne, with many other princes of the Netherlands. Their plan was that John should land in Poitou and distract the attention of the French by a raid up the Loire, while the emperor and his vassals should secretly mobilize a great army in Brabant and make a sudden dash at Paris. The scheme was not destitute of practical ability, and if it had been duly carried out would have placed France in such a crisis of danger as she has seldom known. It was not John’s fault that the campaign failed. He sent the earl of Salisbury with some of his mercenaries to join the confederates in Flanders, while he sailed with the main body of them to La Rochelle, whence he marched northward, devastating the land before him. Philip came out
