Hubert, Abbot of Beaulieu, the monastery founded by John in expiation of Arthur's murder, was secretly sent with offers of submission, and two Knights of the Temple arrived at the camp with a message that Cardinal Pandulfo, the Pope's legate, would fain see the King in private. John consented, and Pandulfo coming to him at Dover, terrified him dreadfully with the description of the French armament, and then skilfully talked of the Pope's clemency and forgiveness. This took the more effect that Ascension Day was approaching, and the prediction of Peter of Wakefield was preying on his mind.

On the 13th of May John consented, in the presence of four of his nobles—the earls of Salisbury, Boulogne, Warenne, and Ferrars—to a treaty such as had been previously offered to him, receiving Langton, recalling the exiled clergy, and making restitution for the injuries they had suffered. This deed was sealed by the King and the four earls, and it seemed as if all were arranged.

Next day, however, the legate was closeted with the King; and on the following, the eve of the Ascension, 1213, the English were amazed by the proceedings of the King.

He repaired to the church of the Temple early in the morning, and there an instrument was read aloud: "Ye know," it said in the name of John to his subjects, "that we have deeply offended our Holy Mother the Church, and that it will be hard to draw on us the mercy of Heaven. Therefore we would humble ourselves, and without constraint, of our own free will, by the consent of our barons and high justiciaries, we give and confer on God, on the holy Apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, on our Mother the Church, and on Pope Innocent III. and his Catholic successors, the whole kingdom of England and of Ireland, with all their rights and dependencies, for the remission of our sins; henceforth we hold them as a fief, and in token thereof we swear allegiance and pay homage in presence of Pandulfo, Legate of the Holy See."

John seems to have found no chancellor who would seal the charter of his shame, but to have had to set the great seal to it himself; thus giving to the Pope "for the remission of his sins," the crown which the Saracen had disdained! The cardinal legate seated himself on the vacated throne, John knelt at his feet, laid down the crown, and spoke the words of allegiance as a vassal, offering money as the earnest of the tribute. Pandulfo indignantly trampled on the coin, in token that the Church scorned earthly riches, but earthly honours Rome did not scorn, and for five days the crown remained in the cardinal's keeping. So John was discrowned on Ascension Day, and Peter of Wakefield's prediction was verified; but it did not save the poor prophet. The vindictive wretch, who pretended to have yielded his throne for the pardon of his sins, caused him and his son to be drawn at the tails of horses and hanged on gibbets.

The excommunication was removed, and the hateful John was declared a favoured son of the Church, while Pandulfo went to put a stop to the

CAMEO
XXVI.

Submission

of John.

1213.

England ef of

Rome.

CAMEO
XXVI

French expedition. This was not quite so easy, Philippe Auguste had been at great expense, and he could not endure to let his enemy escape The battle of him; he was the Pope's friend only when it suited him, and he swore Bouvines. that, Pope or no Pope, he would invade England. Ferrand, Count of 1214. Flanders, remonstrated, and Philippe drove him away in a fury. "By all the saints, France shall belong to Flanders, or Flanders to France!" So he burst into Flanders and besieged Ghent. Ferrand sent to John for aid, and the fleet under the command of the earls of Holland and Salisbury utterly destroyed the French fleet at Bruges on which Philippe depended for provisions, so that he was forced to retreat to his own country. The following year, as he was still in opposition to the Pope, a league was formed for the invasion of France, between John, his nephew Otho, Emperor of Germany, and many other friends of Innocent, but it only resulted in a shameful defeat at Bouvines, where Philippe signalized his courage and generalship, and John and Otho fled in disgrace. In this battle the Bishop of Beauvais again fought, but thought to obviate the danger of being disavowed by his spiritual father by using no weapon save a club.

In the meantime, Stephen Langton arrived in England, took possession of his see, and at Winchester received a reluctant kiss from the King, who bitterly hated the cause of his shame. The Cardinal Archbishop publicly absolved the King, and relieved the country from the interdict, under which it had groaned for five years.

It is a melancholy history of the encroachments of Rome, and of the atrocious wickedness of the English king; and perhaps the worst feature in the case was that his crimes went unreproved, and that it was only his resistance to the Pope that was punished. The love of temporal dominion was ruining the Church of Rome.

CAMEO XXVII.

The laws of

THE first table of English laws were those of Ina, King of Wessex. Alfred the Great published a fuller code, commencing with the Ten Commandments, as the foundation of all law. Ethelstane and St. Dunstan, in the name of Edgar the Peaceable, added many other England. enactments, by which the lives, liberties, and property of Englishmen were secured as soundly as the wisdom of the times could devise.

These were the laws of Alfred and Edward the Confessor, which William the Conqueror bound himself to observe at his coronation, but which he entirely set at nought, bringing in with him the feudal system, according to his own harsh interpretation. The Norman barons who owned estates in England found themselves more entirely subject to the King, who brought them in by right of conquest, than they had been by ancient custom to their duke in Normandy; and Saxons and Normans alike were new to the strict Forest Laws introduced by William.

Every king of doubtful right tried to win the favour of the Saxons, a sturdy and formidable race, though still in subjection, by engaging to give them the laws of their own dynasty. With this promise William Rufus was crowned, and likewise Henry I., who even distributed copies of the charter to be kept in the archives of all the chief abbeys, but afterwards caused them, it seems, to be privately destroyed. Stephen made the same futile promise, failing perhaps more from inability than from design; and after his death the nation was so glad of repose on any terms, that there were no special stipulations made on the accession of Henry II. He and his Grand Justiciary, Ranulf de Glanville, governed according to law, but it was partly the law of Normandy, partly of their own device; the Norman parlement of barons, and the Saxon Wittenagemot, were alike ignored. The king obtained sufficient supplies from his own immense estates, and from the fines which he had the power to demand at certain times as feudal superior, and did in fact obtain at will, and exact even for doing men justice in courts of law.

CAMEO XXVII. Exactions of John.

As long as there was an orderly sovereign, such as Henry II., the unlimited power of the crown was tolerable; under a reckless impetuous prince like Cœur de Lion, it was a grievance; and in a tyrant such as John Lackland it became past endurance. His fines were outrageous extortion, and here and there the entries in the accounts show the base, wanton bribery in his court. The Bishop of Winchester paid a tun of good wine for not reminding the King to give a girdle to the Countess of Albemarle ; Robert de Vaux gave five of his best palfreys that the King might hold his tongue about Henry Pinel's wife; while a third paid four marks for permission to eat. Moreover, no man's family was safe, even of the highest rank: the death of the Lady of Bramber was fresh in the memory of all; and Matilda the Fair, the daughter of Robert Lord Fitzwalter, was seized, carried from her home, and because she refused to listen to the suit of the tyrant, her father was banished, his castles destroyed, and the maiden, after enduring with constancy two years' imprisonment in a turret of the White Tower of London, was poisoned with an egg.

The person of whom John stood most in awe was his Grand Justiciary, Geoffrey Fitzpiers, who, though of low birth, had married the Countess of Essex, and was highly respected for his character and situation.

One day the King, with his usual imprudence, pointed him out to the Provost of St. Omer. "Seest thou him yonder? Never did one man watch another as he watches me, lest I should get some of his goods; but as much pains as he takes to watch me, so much do I take to gain them."

Fitzpiers was not out of earshot, and his comment was, "Sir Provost, well did I hear what the King said to thee; and since he is so set on my wealth, he will surely get it; but thou knowest, and he knows, that I can raise such a storm as he will feel many a day after my death."

John's fears did not prevent him from imposing a fine of 12,000 marks on Geoffrey, which ended his patience. He entered into an understanding with the barons, who had just been summoned by John to attend him on his expedition against France. They joined him, but sailed no further than Jersey, where they declared that the forty days they were bound to serve by feudal tenure were passed; and all turning back met Archbishop Langton and the Grand Justiciary at St. Albans, where Fitzpiers commenced his retaliation by proclaiming in the King's name the old Saxon charter of Alfred and Edward, renewed by Henry I., as well as the repeal of the Forest Laws.

Back came John in rage and fury, and let loose his Free Companions on the estates of the confederates. At Northampton, Stephen Langton met him, and forbade his violence: "These measures are contrary to your oaths," he said. "Your vassals have a right to be judged only

by their peers.
John reviled him.
govern the State."

"Rule you the Church," he said; "leave me to

CAMEO XXVII.

1214.

Langton left him, but met him again at Nottingham, assuring him the barons would come to have their cause tried, and threatening excommunication to every one who should execute the King's barbarous Assembly of the Barons. orders. This brought John to terms, and all parties met in London, where the Archbishop had a previous conference with the barons, to which he brought a copy of the charter, with great difficulty procured from one of the monasteries; he read it to them, commented on its provisions, and they ended by mutually engaging to conquer or die in defence of their rights as Englishmen. The Norman barons were glad enough so to term themselves, and to take shelter under English laws.

But it was the Pope's kingdom now, not that of craven John, and Innocent sent a legate, Nicholas, Cardinal Bishop of Tusculum, to settle the affair. John debased himself by repeating the homage and oath of fealty, and by giving a fresh charter of submission, sealed not with wax, but with gold, as if to make it more binding.

The injuries done to the barons by the Free Companions were beyond the King's power of restitution, but the Pope adjudged him to pay 15,000 marks for the present, after which John set off on his disastrous journey to Bouvines. In his absence Fitzpiers died, and this quite consoled him for his defeat. "It's well," he cried; "he is gone to shake hands in hell with our primate Hubert! Now am I first truly a king!"

But Geoffrey's storm was near its bursting, precipitated perhaps by the loss of this last curb on the lawless king. Langton was seriously displeased with the legate, who had taken all the Church patronage into his hands, and was giving it away to Italians, foreigners, children, nay even promising it for the unborn. The Archbishop sent his brother Simon to appeal to the Pope, but could get no redress. Innocent was displeased with him for opposing the protégé of the papal see; and certainly he had no right to complain of the Roman patronage while he held the see of Canterbury.

However, he was too much of an Englishman to see his Church or his country trampled down; and at Christmas, 1214, there was another assembly of the barons at Bury St. Edmund's. The plans were arranged, and an oath taken by each singly, kneeling before the high altar in the church of the royal Saxon saint, that if the laws were rejected, they would withdraw their oaths of allegiance.

They set out for Worcester to present their charter to the King, but he got intelligence of their design, hastened to London, and put himself under the protection of the Knights of the Temple. They followed him, and on Twelfth Day laid the charter before him. He took a high tone, and only insisted on their declaring by hand and seal that they would never so act again; but finding this was not the way to treat such men, promised on the security of the Archbishop, the Bishop of Ely, and Earl of Pembroke, to grant what they asked at Easter.

He used the space thus gained in taking the cross, that he might enjoy the immunities of a Crusader, fortifying his castles, and sending