the moment of his success in diplomacy John suddenly gave way. It was in fact the revelation of a danger at home which shook him from his attitude of contemptuous defiance. The bull of deposition gave fresh energy to every enemy. The Scotch King was in correspondence with Innocent. The Welsh princes who had just been forced to submission broke out again in war. John hanged their hostages, and called his host to muster for a fresh inroad into Wales, but the army met only to become a fresh source of danger. Powerless to resist openly, the baronage had plunged almost to a man into secret conspiracies; many promised aid to Philip on his landing. John, in the midst of hidden enemies, was only saved by the haste with which he disbanded his army and took refuge in Nottingham Castle. His daring self-confidence, the skill of his diplomacy, could no longer hide from him the utter loneliness of his position. At war with Rome, with France, with Scotland, Ireland and Wales, at war with the Church, he saw himself disarmed by this sudden revelation of treason in the one force left at his disposal. With characteristic suddenness he gave way. He endeavored by remission of fines to win back his people. He negotiated eagerly with the Pope, consented to receive the Archbishop, and promised to repay the money he had extorted from the Church. The shameless ingenuity of the King's temper was seen in his immediate resolve to make Rome his ally, to turn its spiritual thunder against his foes, to use it in breaking up the confederacy it had formed against him. His quick versatile temper saw the momentary gain to be won. On the 15th of May, 1213, he knelt before the legate Pandulf, surrendered his kingdom to the Roman See, took it back again as a tributary vassal, swore fealty and did liege homage to the Pope.

In after times men believed that England thrilled at the news with a sense of national shame such as she had never felt before." He has become the Pope's man," the whole country was said to have murmured; "he has forfeited the very name of King; from a free man he has degraded himself into a serf." But we see little trace of such a feeling in the contemporary accounts of the time. As a political measure indeed the success of John's submission was complete. The French army at once broke up in impotent rage, and when

Philip turned against the enemy whom John had raised up for him in Flanders, five hundred English ships under the Earl of Salisbury fell upon the fleet which accompanied his army along the coast and utterly destroyed it. The league which John had so long matured at last disclosed itself. The King himself landed in Poitou, rallied its nobles round him, crossed the Loire in triumph, and won back Angers, the home of his race. At the same time Otto, reinforcing his German army by the knighthood of Flanders and Boulogne as well as by a body of English troops, threatened France from the north. For the moment Philip seemed lost, and yet on the fortunes of Philip hung the fortunes of English freedom. But in this crisis of her fate France was true to herself and her King; the townsmen marched from every borough to Philip's rescue, priests led their flocks to battle with the Church banners flying at their head. The two armies met near the bridge of Bouvines, between Lille and Tournay, and from the first the day went against the allies. The Flemish were the first to fly; then the Germans in the centre were overwhelmed by the numbers of the French; last of all the English on the right were broken by a fierce onset of the Bishop of Beauvais, who charged mace in hand and struck the Earl of Salisbury to the ground. The news of this complete overthrow reached John in the midst of his triumphs in the South, and scattered his hopes to the winds. He was at once deserted by the Poitevin nobles, and a hasty retreat alone enabled him to return, baffled and humiliated, to his island kingdom.

It is to the victory of Bouvines that England owes her Great Charter. From the hour of his submission to the Papacy, John's vengeance on the barons had only been delayed till he should return a conqueror from the fields of France. A sense of their danger nerved the baronage to resistance; they refused to follow the King on his foreign campaign till the excommunication were removed, and when it was removed they still refused, on the plea that they were not bound to serve in wars without the realm. Furious as he was at this new attitude of resistance, the time had not yet come for vengeance, and John sailed for Poitou with the dream of a great victory which should lay Philip and the barons alike at his feet. He returned from his defeat to find the nobles no longer banded together in secret conspiracies, but openly united in

a definite claim of liberty and law. The leader in this great change was the new Archbishop whom Innocent had set on the throne of Canterbury. From the moment of his landing in England, Stephen Langton had assumed the constitutional position of the Primate as champion of the old English customs and law against the personal despotism of the kings. As Anselm had withstood William the Red, as Theobald had rescued England from the lawlessness of Stephen, so Langton prepared to withstand and rescue his country from the tyranny of John. He had already forced him to swear to observe the laws of the Confessor, a phrase in which the whole of the national liberties were summed up. When the baronage refused to sail to Poitou, he compelled the King to deal with them not by arms but by process of law. Far however from being satisfied with resistance such as this to isolated acts of tyranny, it was the Archbishop's aim to restore on a formal basis the older freedom of the realm. The pledges of Henry the First had long been forgotten when the Justiciar, Geoffrey FitzPeter, brought them to light at a council held at St. Albans. There in the King's name the Justiciar promised good government for the time to come, and forbade all royal officers to practise extortion as they prized life and limb. The King's peace was pledged to those who had opposed him in the past; and observance of the laws of Henry the First was enjoined upon all within the realm. Langton saw the vast importance of such a precedent. In a fresh meeting of the barons at St. Paul's he produced the Charter of Henry the First, and it was at once welcomed as a base for the needed reforms. All hope however hung on the fortunes of the French campaign; the victory at Bouvines gave strength to John's opponents, and after the King's landing the barons secretly met at St. Edmundsbury, and swore to demand from him, if needful by force of arms, the restoration of their liberties by Charter under the King's seal. Early in January in the year 1215 they presented themselves in arms before the King, and preferred their claim. The few months that followed showed John the uselessness of resistance; nobles and Churchmen were alike arrayed against him, and the commissioners whom he sent to plead his cause at the shire-courts brought back the news that no man would help him against the Charter. At Easter the barons again gathered in arms at Brackley, and renewed

their claim. "Why do they not ask for my kingdom?" cried John in a burst of passion; but the whole country rose as one man at his refusal. London threw open her gates to the forces of the barons, now organized under Robert Fitz-Walter as "Marshal of the Army of God and Holy Church." The example of the capital was followed by Exeter and Lincoln; promises of aid came from Scotland and Wales; the northern barons marched hastily to join their comrades in London. There was a moment when John found himself with seven knights at his back, and before him a nation in arms. He had summoned mercenaries and appealed to his liege lord, the Pope; but summons and appeal were alike too late. Nursing wrath in his heart the tyrant bowed to necessity, and called the barons to a conference at Runnymede.

Section III.-The Great Charter, 1215-1217.*

An island in the Thames between Staines and Windsor had been chosen as the place of conference: the King encamped on one bank, while the barons covered the marshy flat, still known by the name of Runnymede, on the other. Their delegates met in the island between them, but the negotiations were a mere cloak to cover John's purpose of unconditional submission. The great Charter was discussed, agreed to, and signed in a single day.

One copy of it still remains in the British Museum, injured by age and fire, but with the royal seal still hanging from the brown, shrivelled parchment. It is impossible to gaze without reverence on the earliest monument of English freedom which we can see with our own eyes and touch with our own hands, the great Charter to which from age to age patriots have looked back as the basis of English liberty. But in itself the Charter was no novelty, nor did it claim to establish any new constitutional principles. The Charter of Henry the First formed the basis of the whole, and the additions to it are for the most part formal recognitions of the judicial and administrative changes introduced by Henry the Second. But the vague expressions of the older charter were now ex

* Authorities.-The text of the Charter is given by Dr. Stubbs, with valuable comments, in his "Select Charters." Mr. Pearson gives a useful analysis of it.

changed for precise and elaborate provisions. The bonds of unwritten custom which the older grant did little more than recognize had proved too weak to hold the Angevins; and the baronage now threw them aside for the restraints of written law. It is in this way that the Great Charter marks the transition from the age of traditional rights, preserved in the nation's memory and officially declared by the Primate, to the age of written legislation, of Parliaments and Statutes, which was soon to come. The Church had shown its power of selfdefence in the struggle over the interdict, and the clause which recognized its right alone retained the older and general form. But all vagueness ceases when the Charter passes on to deal with the rights of Englishmen at large, their right to justice, to security of person and property, to good government. “No freeman," ran the memorable article that lies at the base of our whole judicial system, "shall be seized or imprisoned, or dispossessed, or outlawed, or in any way brought to ruin : we will not go against any man nor send against him, save by legal judgment of his peers or by the law of the land." "To no man will we sell," runs another, "or deny, or delay, right or justice." The great reforms of the past reigns were now formally recognized; judges of assize were to hold their circuits four times in the year, and the King's Court was no longer to follow the King in his 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 the provision on which our constitutional system rests. With the exception of the three customary feudal aids which still remained to the Crown, "no scutage or aid 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