league with the King of England, diverted on his own dominions the wrath of Philip, to whom the more alluring plunder of the rich Flemish towns seemed to offer a conquest more easy and profitable than the realm of England. Flanders, he swore, shall be France, or France Flanders. But the fleets of England joined the Flemings, and the attempted conquest of Flanders by Philip Augustus ended in disgraceful discomfiture.

If the dastardly mind of John was insensible to the shame of having degraded his kingdom into a fief of Rome, he might enjoy an ignominious triumph in the result of Philip's campaign. From himself he had averted all immediate danger; he had arrested the French invasion of England, and the menaced revolt of his barons; he had humbled his implacable enemy by his successes in Flanders. He had secured an ally, faithful to him in all his subsequent tyrannies, humiliations and disasters. The vassal of the Roman See found a constant, if less powerful protector, in his lord the Pontiff of Rome. As elate in transient success as cowardly in disaster, John determined to resume the aggressive; to invade his ancient dominions in Poitou. But he was still under excommunication, (Pandulph had prudently reserved the absolution till John had fulfilled the terms of the treaty by the reception of the exiled prelates.) The barons refused to follow the banner of the kingdom, raised by an excommunicated monarch. John was compelled to fulfill his agreement to the utmost; to drink the dregs of humiliation. July 20, 1213. The exiled prelates, Stephen of Canterbury, WilDay. liam of London, Eustace of Ely, Hubert of Lincoln, Giles of Hereford, landed at Dover; they proceeded to Winchester: there they were met before the gates by John; he fell at their feet and shed tears. The prelates raised him up, mingling, it is said, their tears with his; they conducted him into the church; they pronounced the absolution. King John swore on the Gospels to defend the Church and the priesthood; he swore also to reestablish the good laws of his predecessors, especially those of King Edward; to abrogate the bad laws; to judge every

St. Margaret's

Wendover, p. 260.

CHAP. V.

STEPHEN LANGTON.

99

man according to his right. He swore also to make ample restitution, under pain of a second excommunication, of all which he had confiscated during the exile of the prelates. He again swore fealty to the Pope and his Catholic successors.

John, now free from ecclesiastical censures, embarked for Poitou in the full hope that the realm of England would follow him in dutiful obedience. Most of the barons stood sullenly aloof; those who embarked abandoned him at Jersey. This was the first overt act in the momentous strife of the Barons of England for the liberties of England, which ended in the signature of the great Charter; and at the head of these Barons was Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury. Henry II. when he raised Becket to the Primacy of England, in order by his means to establish the temporal supremacy of the King over the Church, had not more completely mistaken the character of the man, than Innocent when he raised Langton to the same dignity, to maintain all the exorbitant pretensions of Rome over England. Langton, a more enlightened churchman, remembered not only that he was an Archbishop, but that he was an Englishman and a noble of England. He had asserted with the Pope the liberties of the Church against the King; he asserted the liberties of England against the same King, though supported by the Pope. Almost the first act of Langton was to take the initiative in the cause of the barons. John returned from Jersey in fury against the contumacious nobles; he declared his determination to revenge himself, summoned troops to execute his vengeance. Langton sought him at Northampton, and remonstrated at his arming against his barons before they had been arraigned and found guilty in the royal courts, as a violation of the oath sworn before his absolution. The King dismissed him with scorn, commanding him not to meddle in state affairs. But Langton followed him to Nottingham; threatened to excommunicate every one who should engage in this war before a fair trial had taken place, excepting only the King himself." The King sullenly con

P Wendover, p. 261.

sented to convoke a plenary court of his nobles. One meeting of the Primate and the nobles had taken place at St. Albans; a second, ostensibly to regulate the claims of the Church upon the crown, was convened in St. Paul's, London. Langton there produced to the barons the charter of Henry I.; the barons received it with loud acclamations, and took a solemn oath to conquer or die in defence of their liberties.

At Michaelmas arrived the new legate, Nicolas Cardinal of Tusculum: his special mission was the settlement as to the amount to be paid by the king for the losses endured by the clergy. He was received, though the interdict still lingered on the realm till the king should have given full satisfaction, with splendid processions." His first act was to degrade the Abbot of Westminster, accused by his monks of dilapidation of their estates, and of incontinence. The citizens of Oxford were condemned for the murder of two clerks (not without provocation): they were to present themselves at each of the churches of the city naked to their shirts, with a scourge in their hand, and to request absolution, reciting the fiftieth psalm, from the parish priest. The Cardinal, who travelled at first with seven horses, had soon a cavalcade of fifty. The amount of just compensation to the clergy it was impossible to calculate. Their castles had been razed, their houses burned, their orchards and their woods cut down. John offered the gross sum of 100,000 marks. The Legate urged its acceptance, but was suspected of favouring the King. The bishops received in advance 1500 marks, and the affair was for the present adjourned. On the payment of this sum the interdict was raised, but what further compensation was awarded to the inferior claimants does not appear. meeting after meeting took place, at length the business was referred to the Pope, who awarded to the Archbishop, the Bishops of London and Ely, the sum of 40,000 marks. At St. Paul's the King gave greater form and pomp to his disgraceful act of vassalage. Before the high

Still

"Illa non formosa sed famosa subjectio."-M. Paris.

CHAP. V.

THE LEGATE.

101

render of the

altar, in the presence of the clergy and people, John deposed his crown in the hands of the Legate, and Second surmade the formal resignation of the kingdom of realm. England and Ireland. The golden seal was affixed to the deed of demission and consigned to the Pope. John did actual homage to the Legate for the kingdom of England. It was said that Stephen Langton had protested even at Winchester against this act of national humiliation. But if Langton bore this second act in silence, it was manifest that he had fallen-in the favour of the Pope. The Pope was determined to support his vassal, whatever his iniquities, vices, crimes. Langton had now openly espoused the cause of his country's liberties. The Legate was empowered, without consulting the Primate or the Bishops, to appoint to all the vacant benefices; he travelled through the country attended by the royal officers and the clergy attached to the King; he filled the churches with unworthy men, or men at least thought unworthy; he suspended many ecclesiastics, and tauntingly told them to carry their complaints to Rome, while he seized their property and left them nothing to defray the expenses of their journey." He trampled on the rights of patrons, and appointed his own clerks, many probably foreigners, to English preferments. His progress, instead of being a blessing to the land, was deemed a malediction. His final raising of the interdict was hardly a compensation for his insolent injustice. The Pope no doubt shared in the unpopularity of these proceedings. Stephen Langton the Primate summoned a council of his bishops at Dunstable; and sent certain priests to inhibit the Legate from inducting prelates and priests within the realm. Both appealed to the Pope. The Legate sent the politic Pandulph, Stephen Langton Simon his bold brother, who afterwards held the archbishopric of York in despite of Papal prohibition, to the

"Archiepiscopo conquerente et reclamante."- M. Paris. But the words are not in Wendover. Could it be the Archbishop of Dublin? The French translator of Matthew Paris, Mons. Huillard Breholles, would transfer these complaints as if spoken at Dover, to

this second transaction. This is taking great liberty with a text; but it is clear that they were not made by Stephen Langton at Dover; he had not then arrived in England.

u 66

Spreto archepiscopi et episcoporum regni consilio."-Wendover, p. 277.

Meeting at

bury.

A.D. 1214.

Epiphany,

1215.

court of Innocent. But the charter of John's submission weighed down all the arguments of Simon Langton.* The great battle of Bouvines in Flanders, which annihilated the hopes of the Emperor Otho, and placed the Count of Flanders, as a prisoner, at the mercy of July 23, 1214. the merciless Philip Augustus, recalled John from Poitou, where he had made a vigorous, and for a time successful descent, discomfited, soured in temper, to confront his barons, now prepared for the deadly strife in defence of their liberties. Throughout the contest, so long as he was in England, the Primate maintained a lofty position. With the other higher clergy he stood aloof from the active contest, though he was known to be the real head of the confederacy. He was not present at the great St. Edmonds meeting at St. Edmondsbury; he appeared not in arms; he does not seem to have left the court; the demand for the charter of Henry I. came entirely from the lay barons. On the presentation of Address. that address he consented, with the Bishop of Ely and William Mareschal Earl of Pembroke, to be the king's sureties that he would hear and take into consideration the demands of his subjects," and satisfy if he might their discontents. While the appeal to arms was yet in suspense, John, with that craft which in a nobler mind might have been wise policy, endeavoured to detach the church from the cause of the national liberties. The clergy had been indemnified for their losses, but still there was an old and inveterate grievance, the despotic power exercised by the Norman princes in the nomination to vacant bishoprics and abbacies. On the rare occasions. in the early part of his reign, when he gave the royal licence for the election of a bishop or great abbot, the electors were summoned before the king; an election in the royal presence was not likely to be against the royal will. During the interdict John's revenge (it was probably the source of the enormous wealth which he had at his command) had seized the revenue of these unfilled benefices. On his reconciliation with the Roman See, elections were to be in his presence, whether he were in England or on Ibid., p. 296.

* Wendover, p. 279.