John. 12141216.

CHAP. I. wanderings over the realm but to sit in a fixed place But the denial of justice under John was a small danger compared with the lawless exactions both of himself and his predecessor. Richard had increased the amount of the scutage which Henry the Second had introduced, and applied it to raise funds for his ransom. He had restored the Danegeld, or land-tax, so often abolished, under the new name of " carucage," had seized the wool of the Cistercians and the plate of the churches, and rated movables as well as land. John had again raised the rate of scutage, and imposed aids, fines, and ransoms at his pleasure without counsel of the baronage. The Great Charter met this abuse by a provision on which our constitutional system rests. "No scutage or aid [other than the three customary feudal aids] shall be imposed in our realm save by the common council of the realm;" and to this Great Council it was provided that prelates and the greater barons should be summoned by special writ and all tenants in chief through the sheriffs and bailiffs at least forty days before. The provision defined what had probably been the common usage of the realm; but the definition turned it into a national right, a right so momentous that on it rests our whole Parliamentary life. Even the baronage seem to have been startled when they realized the extent of their claim; and the provision was dropped from the later issue of the Charter at the outset of the next reign. But the clause brought home to the nation at large their possession of a right which became dearer as years went by. More and more clearly the nation discovered that in these simple words iay the secret of political power. It was the right of self-taxation that England fought for under Earl Simon as she fought for it under Hampden. It was the establishment of this right which established English freedom.

The rights which the barons claimed for themselves they claimed for the nation at large. The boon of free and unbought justice was a boon for all, but a special

The forfeiture of the

CHAP. I.

provision protected the poor.
freeman on conviction of felony was never to include
his tenement, or that of the merchant his wares, or that
of the countryman, as Henry the Second had long since
ordered, his wain. The means of actual livelihood were to
be left even to the worst. The seizure of provisions, the
exaction of forced labour, by royal officers was forbidden;
and the abuses of the forest system were checked by a
clause which disafforested all forests made in John's reign.
The under-tenants were protected against all lawless ex-
actions of their lords in precisely the same terms as these
were protected against the lawless exactions of the Crown.
The towns were secured in the enjoyment of their muni-
cipal privileges, their freedom from arbitrary taxation, their
rights of justice, of common deliberation, of regulation of
trade. "Let the city of London have all its old liberties
and its free customs, as well by land as by water. Besides
this, we will and grant that all other cities, and boroughs,
and towns, and ports, have all their liberties and free
customs." The influence of the trading class is seen in
two other enactments by which freedom of journeying and
trade was secured to foreign merchants and an unifor-
mity of weights and measures was ordered to be enforced
throughout the realm.

There remained only one question, and that the most
difficult of all; the question how to secure this order
which the Charter established in the actual government of
the realm. It was easy to sweep away the immediate
abuses; the hostages were restored to their homes, the
foreigners banished by a clause in the Charter from the
country. But it was less easy to provide means for the
control of a King whom no man could trust.
By the
treaty as settled at Runnymede a council of twenty-four
barons were to be chosen from the general body of their
order to enforce on John the observance of the Charter
with the right of declaring war on the King should its
provisions be infringed, and it was provided that the Charter

John.

1214

1216.

Innocent annuls the

Charter.

John.

12141216.

CHAP. I. should not only be published throughout the whole country but sworn to at every hundred-mote and town-mote by order from the King. "They have given me fourand-twenty over-kings," cried John in a burst of fury, flinging himself on the floor and gnawing sticks and straw in his impotent rage. But the rage soon passed into the subtle policy of which he was a master. After a few days he left Windsor; and lingered for months along the southern shore, waiting for news of the aid he had solicited from Rome and from the Continent. It was not without definite purpose that he had become the vassal of the Papacy. While Innocent was dreaming of a vast Christian Empire with the Pope at its head to enforce justice and religion on his under-kings, John believed that the Papal protection would enable him to rule as tyrannically as he would. The thunders of the Papacy were to be ever at hand for his protection, as the armies of England are at hand to protect the vileness and oppression of a Turkish Sultan or a Nizam of Hyderabad. His envoys were already at Rome, pleading for a condemnation of the Charter. The after action of the Papacy shows that Innocent was moved by no hostility to English freedom. But he was indignant that a matter which might have been brought before his court of appeal as overlord should have been dealt with by armed revolt, and in this crisis both his imperious pride and the legal tendency of his mind swayed him to the side of the King who submitted to his justice. He annulled the Great Charter by a bull in August, and at the close of the year excommunicated the barons.

Landing of Lewis.

His suspension of Stephen Langton from the exercize of his office as Primate was a more fatal blow. Langton hurried to Rome, and his absence left the barons without a head at a moment when the very success of their efforts was dividing them. Their forces were already disorganized when autumn brought a host of foreign soldiers from over sea to the King's standard. After

John.

1214

1216.

starving Rochester into submission John found himself CHAP. I. strong enough to march ravaging through the Midland and Northern counties, while his mercenaries spread like locusts over the whole face of the land. From Berwick the King turned back triumphant to coop up his enemies in London while fresh Papal excommunications fell on the barons and the city. But the burghers set Innocent at defiance. "The ordering of secular matters appertaineth not to the Pope," they said, in words that seem like mutterings of the coming Lollardism; and at the advice of Simon Langton, the Archbishop's brother, bells swung out and mass was celebrated as before. Success however was impossible for the undisciplined militia of the country and the towns against the trained forces of the King, and despair drove the barons to listen to Fitz-Walter and the French party in their ranks, and to seek aid from over sea. Philip had long been waiting the opportunity for his revenge upon John. In the April of 1216 his son Lewis accepted the crown in spite of Innocent's excommunications, and landed soon after in Kent with a considerable force. As the barons had foreseen, the French mercenaries who constituted John's host refused to fight against the French sovereign and the whole aspect of affairs was suddenly reversed. Deserted by the bulk of his troops, the King was forced to fall rapidly back on the Welsh Marches, while his rival entered London and received the submission of the larger part of England. Only Dover held out obstinately against Lewis. By a series of rapid marches John succeeded in distracting the plans of the barons and in relieving Lincoln; then after a short stay at Lynn he crossed the Wash in a fresh movement to the north. crossing however his army was surprized by the tide, and his baggage with the royal treasures washed away. Fever seized the baffled tyrant as he reached the Abbey of Swineshead, his sickness was inflamed by a gluttonous debauch, and on the 19th of October John breathed his last at Newark.

In

CHAPTER II.

HENRY THE THIRD.

1216-1232.

William THE death of John changed the whole face of English affairs. Marshal. His son, Henry of Winchester, was but nine years old, and

the pity which was stirred by the child's helplessness was aided by a sense of injustice in burthening him with the iniquity of his father. At his death John had driven from his side even the most loyal of his barons; but William Marshal had clung to him to the last, and with him was Gualo, the Legate of Innocent's successor, Honorius the Third. The position of Cualo as representative of the Papal over-lord of the realm was of the highest importance, and his action showed the real attitude of Rome towards English freedom. The boy-king was hardly crowned at Gloucester when Legate and Earl issued in his name the very Charter against which his father had died fighting. Only the clauses which regulated taxation and the summoning of parliament were as yet declared to be suspended. The choice of William Marshal as governor of King and kingdom" gave weight to this step; and its effect was seen when the contest was renewed in 1217. Lewis was at first successful in the eastern counties, but the political reaction was aided by jealousies which broke out between the English and French nobles in his force, and the first drew gradually away from him. So general was the defection that at the opening of summer William Marshal felt himself strong enough for a blow at his foes