Arthur. begun to be thought more of than it used to be, especially on the Continent. John's eldest brother had no children; but the second, Geoffrey, had left a young son, Arthur. Though he was still a child, it was thought on the Continent that, as Geoffrey was older than John, his son ought now to be King of England, Duke of Normandy, and, in short, the heir of his grandfather Henry II. So it certainly would be now, but as yet these things were hardly settled. 25. At one time, indeed, during Richard's life there had been a plan for making Arthur his heir; and now his mother, Constance of Brittany, stirred up all the friends she could for him. A strong party took up his cause, with the French king at their head, and there was some disputing and fighting in France. At last John, who could fight well and was a skilful general, gained a victory, and made his young nephew prisoner. 26. The rest of that poor young prince's story, as it was either known or guessed at, is told in Shakespeare's play of King John. In that play are some of the most pathetic words which even Shakespeare ever wrote-the lament of his mother Constance over her boy "Never, never Shall I behold my pretty Arthur more." She never did. Shakespeare tells how his keeper Hubert was ordered to burn out the Prince Arthur's eyes; and how his uncle darkly hinted, though hardly daring to speak the words, that he should put him to death. Such dreadful deeds are, of course, done in darkness, and no one ever quite knew the exact truth about Arthur's death. The historian, a monk of St. Alban's abbey, who lived at this time, and wrote a very long and interesting account of this most interesting reign, says that John sent him close prisoner to Rouen, "but shortly afterwards the said Arthur suddenly disappeared." If a prince suddenly disappeared at such a time, and in such circumstances, it opened a door to grave suspicions; and, accordingly, it was universally believed that John slew him with his own hand; "for which reason," says the same historian, the monk Roger, "many turned their affections from the king, and entertained the deepest enmity against him." 1203. 27. This horrible crime (for if he did not murder the boy with his own hands, which perhaps he did, there is no reasonable doubt that he did it by the hands of others) was the beginning of John's misfortunes. It not only turned men's hearts against him, but King Philip of France seized on it as a pretext for taking possession of Normandy and a great part of John's other French dominions. It must be remembered that though, as King of England, he was independent of France or any other over-lord, yet he held Normandy and his other French provinces as vassal of the King of France. 28. Philip accordingly summoned John to appear before him and the great lords of France to answer for the crime of which he was accused. John would not come; upon which Philip declared that he had forfeited his duchy, and marched into Normandy with an army. If John had been a different man, if his nobles, French and English, had loved or respected him, things would have turned out very differently. If it had been William the Conqueror, or Henry I., or Henry II., they would never have let Normandy go, we may be But John was already so hated and despised that Philip gained Normandy and most of his other French possessions with hardly any trouble. 1204. Loss of Normandy. sure. 29. So, after being united for about 150 years, England and Normandy were separated again. Of all the French possessions of the Conqueror, there only remained to England the Channel Islands, which had belonged to Normandy, where the poorer people still talk an old-fashioned French, and are governed by something like the old Norman laws, and who still boast "that they rather conquered England than England conquered them." 30. But though this was a great loss to King John, and he acquired the ignominious surname of "Sans-terre," or "Lackland," it was in the end all the better for England. As long as the King of England was also lord of a great part of France, he was more a foreigner than an Englishman, and the English often had to pay money and to fight in quarrels with which they had nothing to do. Some of the great lords, it appears, still had lands both in Normandy and England, as they had soon after the Conquest; but they now lost them and became entirely English, unless they chose to give up their English estates and settle in France as Frenchmen. The provinces in the south of France, which had belonged to Henry II.'s wife Eleanor, were looked on now as a distant dependency of England, instead of England being only a dependency or province of the great French dominions of the king. From this time forward England was England, with an English king, lords, and people. 31. Just at this time, too, the English language broke silence. again. The Anglo-Saxon 'Chronicle,' as we saw, came to an end 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 Layamon. 1205. 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 valiantly 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 |