occasion of demanding a restitution and confirmation of these liberties, at this particular time, is somewhat difficult to be certainly known. Matthew Paris, we see, attributes it to the sudden discovery of the long-lost Charter of King Henry the First. Knyghton, Hemingford, and Robert of Gloucester, agree in asserting, that the King's inordinate debauchery was the cause of these civil dissensions; and the two former have given us a particular account of the plot laid by the King to vitiate the wife of Eustace de Vesci, a principal Baron of those times, who thereupon (it is said) stirred up the other Barons to assert their liberties by force of arms. And this receives some countenance, not only from the testimony of a contemporary writer, who informs us that the King had caused that nobleman and Robert Fitzwalter to be outlawed, had seized their lands, and had demolished their castles; but also from a mandate which was sent by Pope Innocent the Third to Eustace de Vesci, 5th November, 1214, and is preserved in Rymer's Fœdera, requiring him to cease from troubling the King by any farther confederacies or conspiracies against him, since the differences between the kingdom and the priesthood were now providentially allayed. But the Annals of Waverley (which are also apparently contemporary with these

Henry de Knighton was an Historian of the time of Richard II., and has recorded the above circumstance in his work of the Events of England: an abstract of it will be found on page 291 of the present volume.

tumults), besides the oppression and incontinence of the King himself, ascribe the anger of the Barons to the ill use which Peter, Bishop of Winchester, who, in 1213, was constituted Chief Justiciary, made of his newly-acquired power, during the absence of King John in France. And this appears the more probable, because the nobility were from the first extremely disgusted at his promotion, taking it very ill that a foreigner should be preferred above them all; and because in the Great Charter we find the power of the Chief Justiciary considerably curbed in many instances, and a strong inuendo given, that the officers of justice had been deficient in the knowledge, or at least in the observance, of the laws of the land. Possibly, indeed, these motives did all of them concur to animate the conduct of the discontented Barons: domestic injuries received from the King in person, coupled with some gross acts of national oppression by his minister, might whet their private resentment, as well as rouse their public spirit, to demand a new security against such tyrannical proceedings for the future."a

The preceding remarks of Sir William Blackstone, point at another cause for the demands of the English Peers; but however this might be, the liberties of Magna Charta formed the only ostensible motive under which they continued to

act.

The Barons thus united in themselves, but

a Blackst. Introd. p. iv-ix.

divided from their Sovereign, gave to Innocent the opportunity of renewing his demands upon John, who, as his tributary, sent to him for assistance against them; and it was then that Nicolas, Bishop of Tusculum, came over to relax the interdict, and secure the Pope's sovereignty in England, by receiving an additional act of submission from the King. Until this act was performed, and a new resignation sent to Rome, it was vain to expect any aid from Innocent; yet even when all the Legate's demands were conceded, and the Barons perceived their alliance was discovered, Innocent refrained from interfering until they should be more inclined to submit to his authority.

At John's first resignation of the Crown, Cardinal Pandulphus addressed the King in the most haughty and degrading terms: and as the ceremonial of that proceeding was at once the foundation and precedent for the second demand, a translation of the Deed by which England was originally consigned to the Pope, and the words then spoken by the Sovereign, are here inserted from Holinshed's Chronicles of the English Nation.a

"The Charter of King John, his submission, as it was conueied to the Pope at Rome.

"JOHN, by the grace of God, King of England, to all the faithful in Christ who shall see this Charter, Salutation in the Lord. To all you, by this

a Chron. Folio, Vol. II. p. 177. Edit. Lond. 1586.

Charter secured by our Seal, we will it be noted that with God and our holy Mother Church, we have in many things offended, and are therefore unworthy of the very great divine mercies; nor could we worthily have offered that satisfaction to God and the Church which is appointed to be made, unless we ourselves had abased us, and with our Kingdom had willingly humiliated us; for he that humbled himself to death for us, shall inspire us with the grace of his holy spirit: therefore, not by the violence of command, neither by the compulsion of fear, but of our voluntary act, as conferred of in the Common Council of our Barons, we have freely given unto God, and his holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and our Mother the Holy Church of Rome, and our Lord Pope Innocent, with his catholic successors, the whole Kingdom of England and the whole Kingdom of Ireland, with all the rights and extents of them, for the remission of all our sins and all those of our sons, as well for the living as the dead, and therefore, henceforth, from him and the Church of Rome, we do as it were, secondarily, receive and hold them, in the presence of the learned Pandulphus, our Lord the Pope's Subdeacon and familiar friend.

"From this time to our Lord the aforesaid Pope Innocent and his catholic successors, and the Church of Rome, we have made and sworn to the underwritten form and league of Homage in the

presence of Pandulphus, and have made the same as if we were in the especial presence of our Lord the Pope: We also engage that our successors and the heirs of our marriage perpetually, shall give in the same manner as we, a like sum to the Pontiff for the time being, and to the Church of Rome, and shall without contradiction faithfully pay the debt, and recognise the homage.

And also in token of this our perpetual engagement and concession, being willing and stedfast, as well as of our proper and special delivery of our aforesaid kingdoms, for all service and custom, saving always the blessed Peter-pence, there shall be made owing to the Church of Rome a thousand marks sterling, which shall be taken annually; that is to say, at the feast of Saint Michael five hundred marks, and at Easter five hundred namely, seven hundred for the Realm of England, and three hundred for the Kingdom of Ireland, saving Us, our Heirs, Justices, Liberties, and our Royalties.

"All which, such as it is before written, are to be willingly and constantly rated; and we do engage for us and our successors, to act contrary in nothing and if we, or any of our successors, : whoever he may be, presume to attempt any thing against this, he shall, unless he formally repent, fall from his right in the Kingdom.

"And this our Charter of obligation and concession, shall always remain permanent. Witness