King Richard had nominated John as his successor, having never renewed the recognition of Arthur of Brittany which he had made in Sicily. The new King at once set about securing his possession. He succeeded in laying hands upon the treasury at Chinon and the castles of Normandy. In Brittany, Anjou, Maine, and Touraine, there were signs of opposition. The barons put forward the claim of Arthur; Constance, his mother, took the young prince to the court of Philip, and that king proceeded in his name to master the towns and fortresses. But the assistance of his mother Eleanor, who had taken possession of her old inheritance Poitou and Aquitaine, enabled John to make successful opposition to the invasion, and on the 25th of April he was crowned at Rouen, and felt himself strong enough to establish his claims in England. Thither he had already sent the chief of his brother’s ministers—Hubert Walter, the Archbishop of Canterbury; Fitz-Peter, justiciary, and afterwards Earl of Essex; and William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke. These ministers had already obliged the nobles to tender their oath of allegiance; and John, on his arrival in May, was crowned at Westminster, taking the usual oaths to guard the Church, to do justice, and to repeal bad laws, but giving no further charter. The Archbishop is said to have begun the coronation with the declaration that the throne was elective, an assertion received with acclamation by those who were present. He is said afterwards to have declared that he took this step, knowing the King’s character; he was, however, throughout his life a devoted servant of the crown.

John’s position at the beginning of his reign was good. He was accepted in England; he was strong enough to refuse the Scottish King’s demands on Northumberland and Cumberland; the Counts of Flanders and Boulogne made offers of friendship; and Otho of Germany even pressed him not to make peace with the French king, promising to come to his assistance. It was from Philip only that he appeared to have to dread any danger; for that king’s early friendship for him had now changed to hatred, as he declared because he had accepted his continental dominions without asking leave of him, his feudal superior. We have thus early the key to the policy of Philip Augustus, who was determined to make use of the letter of the feudal law to bring his great vassal into subjection and establish royalty in France. He had a ready weapon in the person of young Arthur, who had already done homage to him for Maine, Anjou, Touraine, and Brittany. The efforts of the Church were however constantly exerted to keep the peace between these rivals; and Philip had a difficulty on his own hands which induced him to desire peace. He had married Ingelborga of Denmark, but had almost immediately separated from her and married Agnes de MÉranie. The cause of the divorced princess was warmly taken up at Rome, and in this year Innocent III. had laid France under an interdict.

Under these circumstances a treaty was patched up. John promised to young Louis, the heir of France, the hand of his niece Blanche of Castile, and along with her the Earldom of Evreux; at the same time pledging himself not to assist his nephew Otho against the rival Emperor of Germany, Philip of Swabia. Philip in return secured to England the disputed province of the Vexin, and for the time dropped the claims of Arthur. A formal interchange of homage was then made; on the part of John for his French possessions, on the part of Louis for his newly acquired earldom, on the part of Arthur for his provinces in France. John at once began to destroy his good position. A large aid gathered before his coronation, and another for the purpose of paying a sum of money demanded by the late treaty, had already excited anger in England. He now proceeded to rouse the displeasure of some of his chief French nobles. He put away his wife Hadwisa, the daughter of the Earl of Gloucester, and was beginning to treat for the hand of a Portuguese princess, when he suddenly fell in love with Isabella, the daughter of the Count of AngoulÊme, and carried her off from her betrothed husband, the Count de la Marche. Before the storm broke, however, he was able to oblige the Scotch king, with whom he had been in constant correspondence, to meet him at Lincoln, and there to do him homage, and to swear to be his liegeman for life, limb and land. It must be supposed that this was real personal homage for the kingdom of Scotland, as William the Lion’s claims on the Northern counties were still postponed.

But the King’s difficulties soon began. Wishing to collect an army to suppress disturbances in Poitou, he was met by a refusal from his barons, who assembled at Leicester, and demanded the establishment of their rights. The disturbances in Poitou were caused by the insurrection of the Count de la Marche, full of anger at losing his wife. Deserted by his barons, John was unable to suppress the insurrection. He had been invited to Paris, and received with every demonstration of friendship; but while there the barons of Poitou, following the policy of Philip Augustus, and it is fair to believe induced by him, lodged formal complaints with the French king as their suzerain. John was called upon to plead before the feudal Court of Peers. He refused, averring that the Duke of Normandy had never transacted business with his suzerain except personally upon the borders of his own duchy. Philip seized the opportunity, urged that the Duke of Normandy was at the same time Count of Poitou, obtained judgment against John, declared all his fiefs forfeited and again raised the claims of Arthur. War was the immediate consequence. The defection of the Count of Boulogne opened the west of Normandy, and that side of the country was speedily in the hands of the French.

Arthur himself now appeared in arms, renounced John, and entered Poitou in alliance with the insurgent barons. He there besieged Mirabeau, where the old Queen then was lying ill on her return from a journey into Spain, whither she had gone to fetch the Princess of Castile, according to the treaty with the French King. The capture of the castle seemed inevitable, when John, with one of those sudden acts of vigour which broke his indolent life, suddenly came upon the besiegers, and surrounded them, rescued his mother, and took the young prince captive. The war became still more vehement. The Bretons claimed the restoration of their prince. Philip moved his army to the Loire, and town after town was captured, while John lay in sensual enjoyment at Rouen. The Norman barons, unused to an unwarlike governor, deserted to Philip, and John was compelled to return to England. He had hardly reached it when the terrible rumour spread that the young Prince Arthur had disappeared. His fate is variously related. The more commonly accepted story is, that, imprisoned at Falaise, under the care of Hubert de Burgh, he escaped, by the good will of his custodian, from the designs of John, who had sent to have his eyes put out. He was thence removed to Rouen, to the charge of Robert de Vipont, and murdered, perhaps by his uncle’s own hand, and his body thrown into the Seine.

However he may have died, his death raised a storm of indignation. Philip pressed more boldly forward. In March 1204, Chateau Gaillard, the key of Normandy upon the Seine, was taken. One after the other, Caen, Bayeux, Coutances, Lisieux, and all the country to Mont St. Michel, were captured; Rouen alone remained. John was again summoned before the Peers at Paris. Philip even prepared to invade England, and to make good there the claims of the Counts of Brabant and Boulogne, who had married the granddaughters of King Stephen. In June, Rouen was compelled to capitulate, and in the following year, Loches and Chinon, south of the Loire, yielded, and Rochelle, Niort, and Thouars, in Poitou, were the only towns left in the possession of the English.

Meanwhile John had tried in vain to assemble an effective army in England. He had raised money and collected troops, but it would seem that they were disaffected; for at the urgent entreaties of his faithful servants, Hubert of Canterbury and William Marshall, they were disbanded. One futile attempt was indeed made from Rochelle, and John boasted loudly of his capture of Montauban, but he was none the less compelled in October of this year to make a two years’ peace with Philip. The connection between England and Normandy was thus for ever broken; henceforward the country was thrown upon its own resources, and its life and interests became more distinctly national.

Many causes had been at work to separate the interests of the crown and nation, but before mentioning them it will be necessary to speak of the second great event of John’s reign, his dispute with Innocent III.

In July 1205, had died Hubert of Canterbury, whose influence as minister of the crown had been paramount during this and the preceding reign. The right of election to the metropolitan See had been constantly disputed between the monks of the cathedral and the suffragan bishops of the province. The younger monks thought to steal a march upon their rivals, and, even before the Archbishop had been buried, had elected Reginald, the sub-prior. Without waiting for the King’s approval, which had been invariably required during the reigns of the Norman kings, they hurried the Archbishop elect abroad, binding him not to disclose his election till he reached Rome. His vanity got the better of his wisdom; he boasted of his good fortune. A rumour of what had been done reached the ears of the King. The elder monks took fright, betook themselves to John, and received orders from him, in complete disregard of the claims of the bishops, to elect John de Grey, Bishop of Norwich, one of his ministers. He was elected, invested with the temporalities, and messengers stating the fact were at once sent to Rome. It was now the turn of the bishops to complain. In point of fact, the last three archbishops had been elected by the common consent of the bishops and monks, and with the approval of the crown. The older right was decidedly with the bishops, and they too despatched messengers to the Papal Court. A claim raised by three distinct parties, and brought to his court to settle, was exactly the opportunity Innocent desired. There was much in the position of England and the English Church which he would have wished to see changed. The election of bishops and archbishops, under whatever forms it had been carried on, had been virtually in the hands of the crown. Many of these appointments had been given to Churchmen, who had devoted their chief time to the great administrative system which Henry II. had perfected.[33] The mixture of lay and ecclesiastical elements was very objectionable to the Pope; while if there was one thing more than another which he was desirous of suppressing, it was the independence of national churches as represented by their bishops. Innocent, therefore, now ruled that the bishops had not the slightest voice in the matter, that the monks alone had from time immemorial possessed the right of election, although it had accidentally fallen into abeyance. He thus robbed both king and bishops of their share in the election, and then declaring that the election of Reginald in the present instance had been irregular, bade the monks, a considerable number of whom had come to Rome, proceed at once to the election of his old friend and fellow-student, Stephen Langton, cardinal priest of St. Chrysagonus. He so far acknowledged the existence of John as to write him several letters pressing him to receive the Archbishop. On the rejection of these overtures, foreseeing that he was entering on an important struggle, he arranged a peace with Philip of Swabia, the rival of Otho the Guelph, the Papal candidate for the throne of Germany, and proceeded to consecrate the new archbishop with his own hands at Viterbo.

John had already quarrelled with the bishops, because they had refused, at a council held at St. Albans, to give him a contribution which he had required, for the assistance of this same Otho, who was his nephew. The news therefore of the consecration at Viterbo at once moved him to violence. The monks of Canterbury were driven from their monastery, and when, in the following year, an interdict which the Pope had intrusted to the Bishops of London, Ely and Worcester, was published, his hostility to the Church became so extreme, that almost all the bishops fled; the Bishops of Winchester, Durham and Norwich, two of whom belonged to the ministerial body, being the only prelates left in England. The interdict was of the severest form; all services of the Church, with the exception of Baptism and extreme unction, being forbidden, while the burial of the dead was allowed only in unconsecrated ground; its effect was however weakened by the conduct of some of the monastic orders, who claimed exemption from its operation, and continued their services. The King’s anger knew no bounds. The clergy were put beyond the protection of the law; orders were issued to drive them from their benefices, and lawless acts committed at their expense met with no punishment. While publishing the interdict, the Pope had threatened still further measures, and the King, conscious of his unpopularity among the barons, sought to secure himself from the effects of the threatened excommunication by seizing their sons as hostages. Nevertheless, though acting thus violently, John showed the weakness of his character by continued communication with the Pope, and occasional fitful acts of favour to the Church; so much so, that, in the following year, Langton prepared to come over to England, and upon the continued obstinacy of the King, Innocent, feeling sure of his final victory, did not shrink from issuing his threatened excommunication. John had hoped to be able to exclude the knowledge of this step from the island, as his father Henry had done; but the rumour of it soon got abroad, and its effect was great. The fidelity even of the ministers was shaken, and one of them rose from the council table, asserting that it was unsafe for a beneficed clergyman any longer to hold intercourse with the excommunicated King.

In a state of nervous excitement, and mistrusting his nobles, the King himself perpetually moved to and fro in his kingdom, seldom staying more than a few days in one place. None the less did he continue his old line of policy. Sums of money were still frequently demanded, and sent out of the kingdom to support the cause of Otho, who, having procured the assassination of his rival, was again making head in Germany. Nor did he refrain from carrying out a policy which in any other king would have been accepted as national and good. The loss of the French provinces had thrown England back upon itself, and the country now seemed inclined to seek a surer foundation for its power in the more complete subjection of the immediately surrounding nations. Thus William the Lion of Scotland was compelled, by the advance of an English army, to make a treaty which was in fact a complete submission to England. He was obliged to pay a large sum of money, and to give up into the hands of John his daughters Margaret and Isabella, as well as hostages drawn from the noblest families of the country; while some years later, in 1212, his son Alexander appeared in London, and was knighted and swore fealty to the King.

Shortly after this success in the North, John betook himself to Ireland, where quarrels had arisen between the angry Irish nobles, and where Hugh de Lacy had suppressed his rival John de Courcy, and, being enfiefed with the kingdom of Ulster, had arrogated to himself rights closely touching upon royalty. John raised supplies from the English towns, and crossed over to Waterford. He there succeeded in establishing order, and having introduced the English form of administration, returned to England, leaving John de Grey, Bishop of Norwich, behind him as his representative. He then directed his arms towards Wales. Along the marches of that country there was constant strife, as the Lords Marchers erected new castles and encroached upon their neighbours. In 1211 the King marched through the country, and received at the foot of Snowdon the submission of Llewellyn, his son-in-law,[34] and other princes. A fresh outbreak, accompanied by the usual cruel slaughter of the garrisons of the castles, roused his anger. At Nottingham he had all the Welsh hostages he had taken under the late treaty hanged, and was preparing for further vengeance when news reached him of the discontent of the Northern barons. He was induced therefore to direct his arms against them, filled Northumberland with his foreign mercenaries, and seized fresh hostages from his suspected nobles.

These wars had but afforded still further opportunities for the King’s rapacity; from which every class in the kingdom was now suffering. Those classes even which John had hitherto somewhat spared now felt the pressure. There was a universal persecution of the Jews, who were all suddenly apprehended, and many of them tortured to declare their wealth. He is said to have extracted 60,000 marks from the race. The clergy too had been obliged to find him £100,000; the Cistercian monks some £30,000, or £40,000, and subsequently, in 1212, another £12,000 was wrung from them, because the chief of the order, acting as Papal Legate, had, during the Albigensian crusade, injured Raymond, the King’s brother-in-law.

While he had been thus, even in the pursuit of national objects, estranging by his tyrannical conduct his own subjects, John had been carrying on his opposition to the Pope outside the limits of the kingdom; and events in Europe were rapidly approaching a crisis. Otho, the Guelphic Emperor, upon the death of his rival, had so completely succeeded, that in 1209 he had been solemnly crowned Emperor in Italy. But no sooner had he gained his object than the inevitable rivalry between Pope and Emperor again arose, and in a few years he had forfeited the Pontiff’s favour so completely as to become the object of his greatest hatred; he had even been excommunicated, while the Pope found a new protegÉ in the young Frederick of Sicily, whose anti-papal tendencies were not at that time suspected. Similarity of circumstances rendered still closer the bond of union between John and his nephew, and in 1211 a league of excommunicated leaders was formed, including all the princes of the North of Europe; Ferrand of Flanders, the Duke of Brabant, John, and Otho, were all members of it, and it was chiefly organized by the activity of Reinald of Dammartin, Count of Boulogne. The chief enemy of most of these confederates was Philip of France; and John thought he saw in this league the means of revenge against his old enemy.

To complete the line of demarcation between the two parties, Innocent, who was greatly moved by the description of the disorders and persecutions in England, declared John’s crown forfeited, and intrusted the carrying out of the sentence to Philip. In 1213 armies were collected on both sides, Philip was already on the Channel, and John had assembled a large army on Barhamdown, not far from Canterbury. But Innocent probably never intended to proceed to extremities. To embroil two Christian nations would have been to thwart one of his greatest objects, which was a new crusade. But he knew his man; he knew the weakness which was hidden under the violence and ostentatious passion of John, and he also well knew from his emissaries in England the widespread disaffection there. While the army was still lying in its camp, there appeared at Dover Pandulf, as the Pope’s Legate. He demanded and obtained an audience with the King, and there explained to him the gravity of his position. He found means to bring home to his mind the perfect insecurity of his position at home, while John, from his own experience, knew both the power and the skill of Philip. The consciousness of his danger destroyed his boastful obstinacy, and he made an unconditional submission. The paper which he signed was drawn up almost in the very words of the demands of Pandulf. He offered to plead before the Papal Court; he promised peace and a good reception to Langton, the other bishops, and banished laity; he was to restore all Church property, and to make restitution for all loss since the interdict. Having accepted these conditions, the King went further. On the 15th of May, at Dover, he formally resigned the crowns of England and Ireland into the hands of Pandulf, and received them again as the Pope’s feudatory.

It was not without ulterior objects that John took this disgraceful step. He believed that he saw in it a way out of all his difficulties, and the means of revenging himself upon his enemies. He had no intention of allowing his new position to interfere with his continental alliances, and it was to their success that he looked to re-establish his power. When Philip of France was no longer the agent of Papal authority, he believed that it would be possible for him to resist the storm that was gathering round him. He expected that one great victory would go far to give him back his lost French dominions, when the prestige of success, the friendship of the Church, and the increase of power derived from his regained dominions, would make him master of the situation in England. At first all seemed to work as he wished. Pandulf immediately hurried to France, and forbade Philip to attack the Pope’s new vassal. The opportune attacks of Ferrand of Flanders diverted the French army towards the dominions of that prince; the English fleet which was sent to assist the Flemings destroyed the whole French shipping in the port of Damme; the Archbishop Langton was received with honour, John threw himself at his feet, reconciled himself with the Church, issued writs to all the churches to inquire into the amount of damages to be restored, and ordered a great council to meet at St. Albans to settle finally the restitution of the Church property. He then summoned his barons to meet him, and join him in an attack upon Poitou. But he was mistaken, both in the character of the Churchman, in whom he hoped to find an obedient servant of the Papal See, and in the amount of dissatisfaction among his nobles. The barons of the North refused to follow him, and the meeting at St. Albans resulted, not in a settlement of Church difficulties, but in the open declaration of the complaints of all classes. A few weeks after, Langton, who had seen through the character of John, and was full of hatred of his tyranny, met an assembly of malcontents at St. Paul’s in London, and there declaring that he had found documentary proof of their rights, produced the coronation charter of Henry I., which was at once accepted by the barons as the declaration of the views and demands of their party.

In the meantime, two events had happened disastrous to the royal cause. Nicholas of Tusculum had arrived as Papal Legate, and the justiciary Godfrey Fitz-Peter had died. The Legate, ignorant of the feelings of the English, and eager to support and make real the Papal authority, had thoroughly adopted the King’s cause. He threatened the clergy unless they at once accepted the arrangements which the King offered; and although it was the very thing which had before excited the anger of the Pope, he proceeded to fill vacant benefices with the devoted adherents of the royal party. In the place of the experienced Fitz-Peter, who, however far he might have strained the administrative power of the crown, had yet exercised a wholesome restraint on the King, Peter des Roches was raised to the office of justiciary, and appointed to be the representative of the crown during John’s absence in France. The people saw themselves, as they thought, both in spiritual and temporal matters in the hands of the tyrant. A great success abroad might yet have checked the growing disaffection. The King led an army to Rochelle. At first he was successful everywhere. He overran Poitou, and crossing the Loire captured Anger, but the Poitevin barons had been too deeply injured by him to be faithful friends; their disaffection soon compelled him to retire. But the great confederation was at work upon all sides. The Count of Flanders was pressing in upon the North, Otho was advancing from Germany. In July a junction was made at Valenciennes. Thither Philip now betook himself; he was followed faithfully by most of his great nobles, and by the militia of the chartered cities. The whole success of his policy was at stake. A defeat would ruin the object of his life—the establishment of the royal power in France. For Otho too the stake was high; the triumph of the Guelphic house in its long war against the Hohenstaufen would be the fruit of victory. For such prizes the battle of Bouvines was fought, at a small place upon the little river Marque. The fortune of the day was with the French; in all directions they were victorious. Both for Otho and John the defeat may be said to have been final; the Emperor withdrew to his hereditary dominions, in Brunswick, where, after some not very important fighting, he died in 1218. John returned, having lost his last hope of re-establishing his power at home by foreign conquests.

He returned to England to find himself in a worse position than ever; for Innocent had found out the errors his legate had committed, and recalled him; and John had lost another of his most trusty counsellors by the death of the Bishop of Norwich. Thus left to his own resources, with his usual folly he took the opportunity of demanding a heavy scutage from those barons who had not followed him abroad. The nobles of the North rose. A meeting was held in November at Bury St. Edmunds, and it was there determined that they would make their formal demands upon the King in arms at Christmas time. John was keeping his Christmas at Worcester; but having no doubt heard of the action of the barons, hurried to London, where they appeared before him in arms. He demanded till Easter for consideration. The time was given him. He used it in an attempt to sow dissension among his enemies. He granted to the Church the free right of election, hoping thereby to draw Langton from the confederation. He took the oaths of the crusader to put himself more immediately under the guardianship of the Church, and hastily summoned troops of mercenaries from Poitou.

The barons at once reassembled at Brackley. At their head was Fitz-Walter, an old enemy of the King, and William Marshall, son of the Earl of Pembroke. Their strength consisted of the nobles of the North—and they were spoken of as the Northerners,—but many barons from other parts of England joined them, and in spite of various compromises offered by the King, they laid siege to the castle of Northampton. They there received messages of adherence from the mayor and citizens of London, into which city they were received in May; and thus masters of the greater part of England, and of the capital, they compelled John to receive them and hear their demands at Runnymede, a meadow by the Thames’ side not far from Staines. There was signed, on the 15th of June, the paper of forty-nine articles, which they presented, and which were afterwards drawn up into the shape of the sixty-three articles of the Great Charter.

That Great Charter was the joint work of the insurgent lords, and of those who still in name remained faithful to the crown. In many points this rising of the barons bears the appearance of an ordinary feudal insurrection. Closer examination proves that it was of a different character. The very success of Henry II in his great plan of national regeneration had tended to change the character of English politics. Till his time, the bulk of the people had regarded the crown on the whole as a defence against their feudal tyrants. In the pursuit of good government he had crushed the feudal nobles, and had welded Norman and English into one nation. In so doing, he had greatly increased the royal power; for in those early times good government invariably implied a strong monarchy. In patriotic hands his work might have continued. But when the increased royal power passed to reckless rulers, such as Richard and John, it enabled them to play the part of veritable tyrants. They had used this power in ruthlessly pillaging the people. The great justiciaries, Hubert and Fitz-Peter, content with keeping order and retaining constitutional forms, had almost of necessity lent themselves to this course, while lesser officials had undoubtedly acted with arbitrary violence. The interests of the King and his ministers had thus become separated from those of the nation. To oppose this tyranny, nobles and people could now act in concert. The struggle was no longer between King and people on one side against the nobles on the other, but nobles and people had joined against the King. Besides this political change, a great revolution had taken place in the character of the nobility itself. The feudal nobles, the friends of the Conqueror, had for the most part given place to a new nobility, the sons of the counsellors and ministers of Henry II. In the centre of England alone did remnants of the old feudal families remain. The insurrection then, coming from the North, was the work not of feudal barons but of the new ministerial baronage. Again, the claims raised, although, inasmuch as the monarchy was still in form a feudal monarchy, they bear a resemblance to feudal claims, were such as might have been expected from men trained in the habits of administration. They were claims for the redress of abuses of constitutional power, and were based upon a written document. In addition to this, they were supported by the clergy, who were never and could never be feudal in their views, and by the towns, whose interests were always opposed to those of the feudal nobility. There is another thing to be recollected; the Charter, as ultimately granted, was not the same as the demands of the barons. A considerable number of the older barons, of the bishops, and even the Archbishop himself, remained ostensibly true to the King, and were present at Runnymede as his followers. We are told that it was the younger nobles who formed the strength of the reforming party. Nevertheless, with the exception of the King’s actual ministers, and of those foreigners, the introduction of whom was one of his gravest errors, the whole of John’s own following acknowledged the justice of the baronial claims, sympathized with the demands raised, and joined in putting them into the best shape. The movement was in fact, even where not in form, national.

The terms of the Charter were in accordance with this state of affairs. To the Church were secured its rights and the freedom of election (1). To the feudal tenants just arrangements in the matters of wardship, of heirship, widowhood, and marriage (2-8). Scutage and aids, which John had from the beginning of his reign taken as a matter of course, were henceforward to be granted by the great council of the kingdom, except in three cases, the deliverance of the king from prison, the knighting of his eldest son, and the marriage of his eldest daughter (12). The same right was secured by the immediate tenants to their sub-tenants. The great council was to consist of archbishops, bishops and abbots, counts and greater barons, summoned severally by writ, and of the rest of the tenants in chief, summoned by general writ to the sheriff (14). The lands of sub-tenants, seized by the king for treason or felony, were to be held by him for a year only, and then to be handed over to the tenant’s immediate lord (32). Similarly the crown was no longer to claim wardship in the case of sub-tenants, nor to change the custom of escheated baronies, nor to fill up vacancies in private abbeys (43, 46). These are all distinct regulations of feudal relations. The more general acts of tyranny of the crown were guarded against, by fixing the Court of Common Pleas at Westminster (17); by the settlement of land processes by itinerant justices in the counties where the disputes arose (18); by the limitations of punishments within reasonable limits (20-22); by the restriction of the powers of constables, sheriffs, and other royal officers, both in the matter of royal lawsuits and of purveyance (28-31); by an article (36), which is held to foreshadow the Habeas Corpus Act, stipulating the immediate trial of prisoners; and by other articles (38-40), which are held to foreshadow trial by jury, and which forbid the passing of sentence except on the verdict of a man’s equals, and witness upon oath. Other points secured their liberties to the free towns and to merchants. This Charter was to be guaranteed by the appointment of a committee of twenty-five nobles, any four of whom might claim redress for infractions of it, and upon refusal proceed to make war upon the king.

This Charter, which with its final clause implied absolute submission, John never intended to keep. No sooner were his first ebullitions of anger over, than he proceeded to take steps for destroying it. Messengers were at once sent to Rome to get it annulled, and to Poitou to collect mercenaries. Troops came over in crowds, and the barons in alarm ordered William D’AubignÉ to attack the castle of Rochester. He seized it, but was there besieged, and compelled to surrender to John’s mercenaries. All the common men of the garrison were hanged. John’s other message was equally successful. A letter from Innocent announced that he totally disallowed the Charter, and ordered Langton to excommunicate the King’s enemies. This he refused to do, and other excommunications and interdicts were also futile. John’s temporal weapons were more successful. He overran England with his mercenaries, burning, slaying and harrying with vindictive fury, and so superior was he in the field, that the barons found themselves obliged to summon Louis of France to their assistance. Louis’ wife was John’s niece, and they probably intended to use this slender connection to change the dynasty.

His success was not very rapid, though at first he seemed to have the game in his hands. He wasted his time and lost his opportunity before the castles of Dover and Windsor. His conduct also in bestowing fiefs upon his French followers began to excite the jealousy of the English; and John’s cause was again wearing a more hopeful appearance, when, marching from Lincoln, which he had lately conquered, he crossed the Wash, with all his supplies which he had lately drawn from Lynn. The rise of the tide destroyed the whole of his train, and broken by his loss, or perhaps poisoned, or perhaps a victim to his greediness, he died on the 19th of October at Newark. In July of the same year he had lost his great protector Innocent III.