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THE SONS OF HENRY.

201

1205. Layamon.

in 1154, and for the next fifty years any one who had anything to write wrote it in Latin. But now an English clergyman wrote, or, rather, translated a book into English. It was a history of England; much more amusing, I am afraid, than this one is, but not half so true. It contained many strange and some beautiful stories, among others that of King Lear and his daughters; and also curious and romantic histories of King Arthur and his knights, and the wizard Merlin. These tales were so popular at that time that the unfortunate young Prince of Brittany had been named after King Arthur.

LECTURE XXI.-MAGNA CHARTA.

The dispute with the Pope. Stephen Langton. John becomes the Pope's vassal. The archbishop and the barons demand the charter. The changes it introduced. John breaks the charter. The French invasion. Death of John.

1. WE have seen that the loss of John's great provinces in France might be looked on as a "blessing in disguise." His wickedness also worked for good in another way. For a long time past the great barons and nobles had been tyrants and oppressors, and the king and the people had, more or less, made common cause against them. In this way the kings had grown to be very strong and powerful, and, had it gone too far, would have been likely to become despots themselves, whom nobody could resist. If the king had been tolerably good, he would have gone on becoming more and more powerful, as he did in France, and some other countries. But John was so intolerably bad that neither the nobles nor the people could put up with him. So before the royal power had become too firmly established all his subjects rose against him, and fixed once and for ever the bulwark of English liberty.

2. Soon after losing Normandy John got into a great quarrel with the Pope, who was now named Innocent III., and in the first instance there is no doubt that he was in the The quarrel right. The quarrel was about electing an archbishop with the of Canterbury. There were two candidates for the Pope. office, one approved by the king, and the other not. Both of them claimed to have been elected by the monks of Canterbury. In this difficulty they both went off to Rome, that the Pope might decide between them. But they were greatly surprised when they got there to find that the Pope refused to have either of them made archbishop, and commanded the monks to elect another man of his appointing.

3. Now this was a quite unheard-of thing, for the Pope to appoint an English archbishop, and when John heard it he was naturally most indignant, and made a very spirited answer. He

declared he wondered at the Pope's audacity, and he would stand up for the rights of his crown to the death, and "as there were plenty of archbishops, bishops, and other prelates of the Church, as well in England as in his other territories, who were wellstored in all kinds of learning, if he wanted them, he would not beg for justice or judgment from strangers out of his own. dominions,” words which, as Fuller says, well "deserved memory, had they been as vigorously acted as valiántly spoken." Here, again, we shall see good come out of evil. Though it is quite certain the Pope had no right whatever to appoint the Archbishop of Canterbury, yet he chose a very good man for the post. His name was Stephen Langton, a name which ought to be had in honour as long as England lasts. However, for the time, King John forbade his entering the country.

Stephen Langton.

1208. The inter

dict.

4. The Pope was not going to be baffled. He had a power for punishing kingdoms which fell under his displeasure almost as terrible as was the power of excommunication against individuals. This was what is called the interdict (or "forbidding"). A pope's interdict meant that all religious services were forbidden in the country. The churches were shut up; no sacraments were performed, except baptizing infants and giving the last office to the dying. Marriages were only celebrated in the churchyard or in the porch, instead of inside the church; and the dead were buried in roads and ditches, without any prayers or any clergyman's presence. "See now," says Fuller, " on a sudden the sad face of the English Church-a face without a tongue; no singing of service, no reading of prayers. None need pity the living . . . when he looks on the dead, who were buried in ditches like dogs, without any prayers said upon them. True, a well-informed Christian knows full well that a corpse, though cast in a bog, shall not stick there at the day of judgment; thrown into a wood, shall then find the way out; buried by the highway side, is in the ready road to resurrection; . . . yet, seeing that these people believed that a grave in consecrated ground was a good step to heaven, and were taught that prayers after death were essential to their salvation, it must needs put strange fears into the heads and hearts, both of such which deceased, and their friends which survived them."

5. Thus we see what terrible misery this interdict would cause. It would seem very hard even to us now were all churches and chapels shut up, where we are used to go for

prayer and praise, comfort and instruction; but it was far harder then, when people had no Bibles or other books at home, and when they attached far more importance to Church rites and the officiating priest than we do. And "what equity was it that so many thousands in England, who in this particular case might better answer to the name of 'Innocent' than his Holiness himself, should be involved in this punishment?"

John's

6. The people of England were thus in a very sad condition, punished by the Pope for no offence on their part, and tyrannized over more and more by the cruel king. Roger, the monk of St. Alban's (who is generally called Roger tyranny. of Wendover), tells us that there were at this time in the kingdom of England many nobles whose wives and daughters the king had shamefully insulted, "to the great indignation of their husbands and fathers; others whom he had, by unjust exactions, reduced to the extreme of poverty; some whose parents and relations he had banished, converting their inheritances to his own uses; thus the said king's enemies were as numerous as his nobles."

7. He gives many examples of John's horrid cruelty. He was offended at a certain archdeacon, named Geoffrey, for something he had said; so he had him seized, chained, and thrown into prison, where he was half-starved; and as if that were not enough, "after he had been there a few days, by command of the said king, a cap of lead was put on him, and at length, being overcome by want of food, as well as by the weight of the leaden cap, he departed to the Lord."

8. At one time, being afraid his nobles were going to rebel, he demanded hostages of them; that is, he required them to give him their sons or nephews as pledges of their faithfulness. Amongst others, John's messengers came to a certain nobleman named William de Braose, to ask for his son to be delivered into the care of the king. But "Matilda, wife of the said William, with the sauciness of a woman, took the reply out of his mouth, and said to the messengers in reply, 'I will not deliver up my son to your lord, King John, because he basely murdered his nephew Arthur, whom he ought to have taken care of honourably.'" We may imagine how enraged the king was when he heard this speech; he immediately sent knights and soldiers to seize on the whole family. Though they escaped for that time, he got possession of the poor lady afterwards with her son, and, to punish her for her "saucy" speech, starved them both to death!

9. This is how he treated clergymen and women. We will now read one specimen of how he dealt with the Jews, and then we will leave this miserable part of the subject. "All the Jews throughout England, of both sexes, were seized, imprisoned, and tortured severely, in order to do the king's will with their money.

Some of them gave up all they had, and promised more, that they might thus escape. One of them, at Bristol, even after being dreadfully tortured, refused to ransom himself; on which the king ordered his agents to knock out one of his cheek-teeth daily, until he paid 10,000 marks of silver. After they had for seven days knocked out a tooth each day, with great agony to the Jew, and had begun the same operation on the eighth day, the said Jew, reluctant as he was to provide the money required, gave the said sum to save his eighth tooth, though he had already lost seven."

10. But we are now coming to his great disgrace and humiliation. He had not taken much notice of the interdict, and still refused to allow Stephen Langton to enter the kingdom. So now the Pope, who had just excommunicated the Emperor of Germany, and, as Fuller says, "had his hand in," proceeded to excommunicate John by name. John even now took no notice, but went on as before. And he led armies into Wales and Ireland, and was very successful in his fights, for he was, as we know, a good soldier. But meanwhile he made his own nobles and people hate him worse and worse, and especially the clergy and the Church, for he tried to punish them in every way for the Pope's offences.

1213. The Pope

deposes him.

11. Pope Innocent, having tried the interdict and the excommunication in vain, now went a step farther, and deposed King John-declared that he should no longer be King of England, but that the Pope would choose another in his stead. This was what things had come to by this time. It was enough to make William the Conqueror turn in his grave that the Pope should be taking upon him to put down kings and set up kings in England. But John was frightened now, and cowed. And well he might be, for the nobles, "well pleased that they were absolved from their allegiance to John," began to make friends with his enemy the King of France; and he made preparations to invade England, and seize on that as he had already done on Normandy.

12. There would have been no fear that the King of France could have conquered England, if the English had loved their king. For England was very strong now, had a great fleet, and

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