A HISTORY FOR YOUNG ENGLAND.*

What a pitie is it to see a proper gentleman to have such a crick in his neck that he cannot look backward. Yet no better is he who cannot see behind him the actions which long since were performed. History maketh a young man to be old, without either wrinkles or grey hairs; privileging him with the experience of age, without either the infirmities or inconveniences thereof. Yea, it not onely maketh things past, present; but inableth one to ? make a rationall conjecture of things to come. For this world affordeth no new accidents, but in the same sense wherein we call it a new moon; which is the old one in another shape, and yet no other than what had been formerly. Old actions return again, furbished over with some new and different circumstances. FULLER.

CHAPTER THE TWELFTH.

MAGNA CHARTA.

1213-1216. In the multitudinous correspondence of His Holiness Innocent the Third, there is a letter from his royal vassal, John of England, to the effect that the English earls and barons had been devoted to him before he surrendered his kingdom to the pontiff; but since that time had violently risen against him and specially on that account, sicut publicè dicunt.' The writer's mean soul is in the letter, striving to make what worldly profit it can of the slavish infamy it has undergone. Neither assertion was true. Indignation after the Papal compact existed as little as devotion before it. There is indeed some reason to believe that the barons who now became most active against the king had declined to take any active part against the surrender of the kingdom. Beside the Archbishop of Dublin, the Bishop of Norwich, Walter Fitz-Peter, William of Salisbury, William of Pembroke, Reginald of Boulogne, William of Warrenne, Saher of Winchester, William of Arundel, William of Ferrers, William Briwere, Peter Fitz-Herbert, and Warren Fitz-Gerald, who, though with popular leanings, never left the banner of the king, even the Bigods, De Mowbrays, and De Veres, may be pronounced entitled to so much of the infamy of the act as presence and non-interference can imply. But the letter which is relied upon by the Roman Catholic historians to show that they

* Continued from p. 276, Vol. III.

had even compelled it, must be taken with large allowance. That one of John's most servile agents in Rome should report to his master an alleged appeal from the barons to the pope's gratitude, on the ground that it was not to the good-will of the king, but to them, and the compulsion which they had employed, that he 'was indebted for his superiority over the English crown,' will only be thought conclusive by the most hasty or the most prejudiced historian. On the other hand, it consists with the best authorities to admit that the uniform policy of the nobles to degrade the position and humble the pride of their sovereign, might have seemed to them to sanction the cold acquiescence, if not the savage satisfaction, with which they saw that desperate consummation of the incredible baseness of John. Party spirit, as I have shown, had arisen in England. From it have sprung scenes and compromises often neither just nor honourable; but with it have been associated, in very memorable periods of history, the liberties and political advances of the English people.

By the act of the 15th of May, 1213, the aspect of the existing contention was changed. The pope declared himself on the side of his vassal; and the French king, who lay with a powerful army at Boulogne, meditating invasion, was ordered by Pandulf to desist. But Philip's compact was loosened with the pope, to be only more firmly knit with the barons. They had already opened overtures with his son; doubtful of the side that would be taken by the burgesses and townsmen, the most important section of the people. These, lately so eager to resist invasion that they had rallied to the standard of John, can alone be said to have remained undecided at this extraordinary crisis.

But the event was at hand which determined them. By the compact made at Dover, and which in all its provisions on the side of justice the king even now sought to evade, Langton and the exiles returned. John met them with assumed deference at Winchester, as the clients of his feudal lord; and embraced the cardinal archbishop at the entrance of the cathedral. But the sentence of excommunication having been publicly revoked, and the oath of papal fealty repeated, he was unexpectedly called upon by Langton to make additional oath that he would abolish all illegal customs, restore to every man his rights, and revive the laws of the Confessor. It is added by Mathew of Paris, who relates this, that to the multitude assembled such proceedings were vague and unintelligible, but by the few initiated in the secret sufficiently understood. From that day, in truth, the Grand

Confederacy took life; and what was best in England, gradually, in part unconsciously, joined and strengthened it.

Stephen de Langton was its soul and head. Selected by Innocent, as I have said, for that inflexible constancy and courage of character which was thought most available to confront the king, the pontiff had now an opportunity to test the endurance of this quality, with himself as its antagonist. For not with Innocent's authority had Langton exacted John's oath for liberty. When the cardinal stepped again upon his native soil, after his long and partly voluntary exile, he seemed to have left behind him every allegiance that could impinge upon his obligations as an Englishman. No man worthier of the highest honours of the name exists in our records. In an unlettered age, he had cultivated with perfect success the most elegant accomplishments of poetry; and at a time apparently the most unfavourable to the growth of freedom, he now directed existing discontents, which might have wasted in casual conflict but for him, to the establishment of that deep and broad distinction between a free and a despotic monarchy, of which our history, throughout all the varying fortunes and disasters that awaited it, never afterwards lost the trace. the work of Langton, and his claim to eternal memory. The barons were a rope of sand before his arrival. He concentrated their wavering purposes and scattered aims.

This was

In a month after the scene at Winchester, the first bold step was taken. Excited by the noble exploit, the first of an uninterrupted series, of the English navy against the French fleet at Damme (the latter thrice outnumbering the former, yet at once dispersed or taken), John had suddenly resolved to assume the offensive against Philip and carry war into France; and he summoned the leading barons by their allegiance to meet him on the French coast. Instead of obeying the summons they repaired to St. Albans, and held a council, at which Langton was present; over which Fitz-Peter the justiciary presided; and where was first unrolled that charter of the First Henry which was in future made the basis of what they now resolved to claim. The copy (according to Roger of Wendover) belonged to Langton, and was supposed to be the only one then in existence. After council, the daring resolve was taken to send forth the issue of its deliberations in the form of a series of royal proclamations. In these, the laws granted by Henry the First were ordered to be universally observed; and capital punishments were denounced against the

sheriffs, foresters, or officers of the king, who should exceed the strict line of their duty, as limited by those laws.

John returned from France, denouncing vengeance. Military execution, he said, should fall upon the traitors; and in savage earnest of his threat he let loose a band of mercenaries on the lands of his recusant nobles. Langton confronted him at Northampton, and adjured him to beware of the violation of an oath; reminding him that vassals must suffer by the judgment of their peers, and not by lawless violence. Rule you the church,' shouted the king, and leave me to rule the state.' He pushed on to Nottingham, and was there again confronted by the cardinal; who threatened, if the justice of a trial should continue to be refused, to excommunicate all, with exception of the king himself, engaged in a cause so impious. John yielded; and a summons was sent to the accused to appear before himself or his justices. A summons more surely meant to be obeyed, was at the same time sent to them from Langton, to meet at St. Paul's in London in a fortnight from that date, and ascertain the damages sustained in the recent quarrel.

They met ostensibly with that purpose; but what really passed is told by Mathew of Paris. Langton drew the Barons aside as they entered, and having privately appealed to each to forego his mere personal claim, again publicly produced the charter of Henry Beauclerc, read it aloud (few of his noble hearers could have done that), and, amid loud acclamations, commented on its outraged provisions, one by one. It is added by the writer of the contemporary Annals of Waverly, in proof of the enthusiasm thus excited, that Langton availed himself of it to administer, before the meeting closed, an oath to every baron assembled, solemnly binding them to each other to achieve the recovery of those liberties, or to die in the struggle. The sword was now drawn,

and the scabbard cast away.

His Holiness became alarmed for his English fief. Cardinal Nicholas of Tusculum came hastily to England with the title of legate, and with importunate letters to Langton. The king caught at this hope of help with desperate energy; renewed to him his oath of fealty; and, with a prostrate eagerness of selfdebasement, offered to do him homage as the papal representative, though, by previous agreement, bound to do this only to his Holiness himself. The offer was accepted, and the second surrender of England to Rome took place in Westminster at the Christmas

festival of 1213. But not without interruption did this second solemn degradation pass. Langton came forward with a protest, and laid it upon the altar at its close. The legate returned to Rome with his new 'forma juramenti fidelitatis,' sealed with gold; and with report to Innocent, that John was the most pious of princes, and Langton the most factious of archbishops.

Before a new step was taken nearly a year had passed, occupied by the disastrous campaign in France which ended at the battle of Beauvines, and brought back John to a more inglorious struggle, for which, on the side of the Barons, the interval had been well prepared. His intemperance gave them the occasion for which alone they waited. His gross indulgences had never been so scandalous or violent as between the October and November of 1214. The Justiciary Fitz Peter had always exerted some control, and his death was the first welcome news that saluted John's return. It is well,' he cried; in Hell he may again shake hands with primate Herbert, for surely he will find him there. He leaves me here, God's teeth! at last the lord of England.' But even as he spoke, the Grand Confederacy was in motion. The 20th of November was the Festival of St. Edmund's, and an opportutunity for assembling in numbers without awaking suspicion. All the Barons in the league met accordingly on that day in the abbey, on pretence of celebrating the saint's festival, but in reality to mature their plan of future proceeding; to define the different liberties on which they were prepared to insist; and to resolve on demanding them in a body from the king at the approaching festival of Christmas. Before they separated, each baron, according to his station, advanced singly to the high altar, and, laying his hand upon it, took solemu oath to withdraw his fealty from John if he should continue to refuse the rights demanded; and further, until the unreserved concession of those rights, to levy war upon him.

The End was now begun; and, from this memorable day until the day of Runnymede, Langton seems to have remained by the side of the king. The inference that he was become in any respect favourable to him, is monstrous. It was even at this time, while, with Pembroke and with Warrenne, he was almost the only illustrious or powerful Englishman who remained with the banner of John, that he rejected with haughty and stern refusal that final appeal from his spiritual chief at Rome which inveighed against his participation in the injustice of refusing to John those rights which the