important person in the family, and Lucy's | large but varying body of lower vassals, who

bright eyes were brighter than usual ́at the prospect of his visit.

were intent on pursuing the policy of foreign feudalism. The national party was also generally in close alliance with the clergy, whose re-defence of the classes from whom they chiefly zeal for their own privileges extended to the

"What a coxcomb I am, to be sure!" said Yorke to himself afterwards in the tirement of his room. "I was beginning to fancy the little girl was ready to join in the family plot and make eyes at me while from the way in which she brightens up because, forsooth, a brother is coming home, she was evidently bored all the time with my company. But it is always my folly to be fancying that one woman or another is in love with me."

From The Contemporary Review. THE POPE AND MAGNA CHARTA.

BY CARDINAL MANNING.

ties maintained in the general recollection the sprang, and whose vindication of class liberpossibility of resisting oppression.

The clergy may be roughly divided into three schools- -the secular, or statesman school; the ecclesiastical, or professional; and the devotional, or spiritual. Of these the representative men are Roger of Salisbury, Henry of Winchester, and Anselm of Canterbury. Thomas the Martyr more or less combines the characters of the three throughout his life. The three stages through which he passed — that of chancellor, that of primate, and that of candidate for martyrdom (sit venia egregio auctori) answer well to the three schools of the clergy. Throughout the whole period, the first of these schools was consistently on the side of the king, the last as consistently on the side of the nation; the second, when its own privileges were not in danger, as from the peace of the Church, in 1107, to the Beckett quarrel, and after the conclusion of that quarNo divicontinuously on the same side. sion of the clergy ever sympathized with the feudal party.*

Again Mr. Stubbs writes:

ABOUT two years ago, in speaking of the conflict of S. Edmund of Canterbury against Henry III. for the liberties of the Church, I pointed out that his contest was only one of many periods in the contin-rel, uous resistance to royal excesses, in behalf of the laws and liberties of England, maintained by S. Anselm, S. Thomas, Archbishop Langton, and S. Edmund. I might have added, by Archbishop Richard, his immediate predecessor. This statement was next day met by the old taunt that the pope condemned Magna Charta. I then shortly pointed out the distinction, here again asserted, between the mode in which the Great Charter was obtained, and the contents or merits of the Great Charter itself. The former, not the latter, was condemned.

Before I enter upon this point, I cannot refrain from quoting a passage from the preface of Professor Stubbs, in his volume of "Documents Illustrative of English History." And in doing so I must express my grateful sense of the service he has rendered to historical truth. His small volume stands alone for learning and discernment.

Describing the period I was speaking of, he says:

:

The political situation may generally be stated thus: Since the Conquest, the political constituents of the nation had been divided into two parties, which may be called the national and the feudal. The former comprised the king, the ministerial nobility, which were created by Henry I. and Henry II., and which, if less richly endowed than that of the Conquest, was more widely spread and had more English sympathies; the other contained the great nobles of the Conquest, and the always

tury the struggle is between the barons, clergy, From the beginning of the thirteenth cenand people on one side, and the king and his personal partisans, English and foreign, on the other. The barons and prelates who drew up the charter were the sons of the ministerial nobles of Henry II., the imitators of S. Anselm and S. Hugh, of Henry of Winchester and Thomas of Canterbury.t

But does not this show that if the spiritual prelates were with the people, they were certainly with the pope, by whom they were canonized? How, then, was not the pope with the people and its Christian liberties?

I will now give evidence of my assertion that the barons, and not the contents of the charter, were condemned by Innocent III.

I. Let us first examine the antecedents

of the conflict between John and the barons, out of which the Great Charter arose.

It is simply impossible to form an adequate conception of this conflict unless we go back to the reign of our earlier kings. Mr. Stubbs, in his valuable work "The Memorials of S. Dunstan," gives the promissio regis, or the oath taken at his

Stubbs' Documents, pp. 31, 32: Oxford, 1874. ↑ Ibid. p. 33.

coronation by the Saxon king Edwy, | spect to inheritance, taxation, military which is as follows:service, and the like.

1. Know ye that by the mercy of God, and But the conflict between traditional lib-common counsel of the barons of the whole erties and royal customs, which began king of the same kingdom; and forasmuch as kingdom of England, I have been crowned before the Conquest, became sharper and the kingdom has been oppressed by unjust less tolerable after the Conquest. The exactions, I, in the fear of God, and in the rule of our foreign kings was especially love I bear towards you, first set free the Holy despotic, and, under them, the conflict Church of God, so that I will not sell or between legal rights and royal usages pledge (its goods). Nor on the death of brought on the conflict of S. Anselm with archbishop, bishop, or abbot will I receive Henry I., and the martyrdom of S. anything of the domain of the Church, nor of Thomas of Canterbury under Henry II. its members, until a successor shall enter

The second article relates to inheritance. | scourge for their own back; and that The third and fourth to widows. The fifth to coinage and false money. The sixth to pleas and debts; the six following to dues, and sureties, and murder, and forests, and the like.

The thirteenth is, "The law of King Edward I restore to you, with the amendments by which my father, with the advice of his barons, amended it." *

I have given this outline of the charter of Henry I. more fully because it is in germ the Magna Charta of Runnymede. In the following reign Stephen issued two charters in the same express terms. The first, which is the shorter, runs as follows:

their own turn would come next. In truth, the conflict is always one and the same-the king sometimes against the barons, sometimes against the bishops, sometimes against both: it is always the same in kind—that is, of the royal customs violating the laws and liberties, civil and ecclesiastical, of the English people.

*

We come now to the reign of John. Mr. Stubbs says that the reign of Richard had separated the interests of the crown from the interests of the people. The reign of John brought the interests of the people and those of the barons into the closest harmony. Both alike suffered from arbitrary and excessive taxation, Know ye that I have granted, and by this from delay of justice, exactions of milimy present charter have confirmed, to all my tary service out of England, that is, in barons and men in England, all the liberties France, outrages of every kind, both puband good laws which Henry, king of the En-lic and domestic. Before I go into detail, glish, my uncle, gave and granted to them; I will give the picture of King John from a and I grant to them all good laws and good recent historian. customs which they had in the time of King Edward.

Nevertheless Stephen went to war with his barons and his bishops. Both parties fought with foreign mercenary troops, to the great misery of the English people.†

Mr. Greene, in his "History of the English People," a book of great value, but marred by great inaccuracies, like the hisin English the line of the old chronicler :torical writings of Lord Macaulay, quotes

edness their insolence, their selfishness, their

Sordida fœdatur, fœdante Johanne, Gehenna. Henry II. swore, at his consecration, to "Foul as it is, hell itself is defiled by the respect the same laws and liberties. He fouler presence of John." The terrible veralso issued a charter of liberties; and in dict of the king's contemporaries has passed a parliament in London, "he renewed the into the sober judgment of history. In his peace, and laws, and customs which ob- inner soul, John was the worst outcome of the tained from ancient times throughout Angevins. He united into one mass of wickEngland." Through the whole of his unbridled lust, their cruelty and tyranny, their reign Henry endeavoured to enforce his shamelessness, their superstition, their cynical royal "customs," the "avitas consuetu- indifference to honour or truth. In mere boy. dines" of his ancestors, as against the hood, he had torn with brutal levity the beards laws and liberties of England. On one of the Irish chieftains who came to own him occasion, when he swore by God's eyes as their lord. His ingratitude and perfidy that he would exact a certain payment had brought down his father's hairs with sorfrom tenants of land, S. Thomas, to pro- the worst of traitors. All Christendom berow to the grave. To his brother he had been tect the people from an oppressive cus-lieved him to be the murderer of his nephew, tom, withstood him, saying, "By the eyes by which you have sworn, not a penny shall be paid from all my land!" The constitutions of Clarendon were in direct violation of the laws and liberties to which the king had bound himself by oath and by charter. They violated the liberties of the Church in its tribunals, appeals,

Arthur of Brittany. He had abandoned one wife and was faithless to another. His punishments were refinements of cruelty, the starvation of children, the crushing old men under copes of lead. His court was a brothel, where no woman was safe from the royal lust, and where his cynicism loved to publish the news of his victims' shame. He was as craven in his superstition as he was daring in his impiety. He scoffed at priests, and turned his

back on the mass, even amidst the solemnities

of his coronation, but he never stirred on, a journey without hanging relics round his neck.†

At his coronation in 1199, John swore, in the hands of Hubert, archbishop of

Stubbs' Documents, p. 129.

↑ Greene's History of the English People, p. 118.

Canterbury, to preserve the liberties of the | oured to compel them to renew their homChurch, and the laws of the land.* age. His despotism became minutely In the year 1200, John began his ca- vexatious. He forbade the taking of birds reer of tyranny by seizing all the posses- throughout England; and commanded sions of the archbishop of York. The the hedges and ditches which protected archbishop excommunicated the officers the harvest-lands to be destroyed. who had seized his manors. John was exacted homage of all freeholders, even enraged at this, but still more enraged be- from boys of twelve years old; and comcause the archbishop had forbid the col-pelled, for that purpose, the Welsh to lection of a plough-tax in his diocese.

In the year 1203, the shameless vices of the king, and the loss of his castles in Normandy, caused the barons who were with him in France to forsake the court.‡ He then returned to England, and exacted of the barons a seventh part of their goods: he committed also all manner of rapine by violence against the Church and convents.§

John had shown himself to be vicious, sensual, violent, false, tyrannical, and a violator of his coronation oath by infractions of the liberties of the Church and of the laws of the land. But hitherto the authority and statesmanship of Archbishop Hubert had in some degree restrained him. In 1205 the archbishop died; and on hearing of his death, John said exultingly, "Now for the first time I am king of England." ||

From this date opens a new chapter in John's history.

In order to force his favourite, John de Gray, into the see of Canterbury, he overbore the freedom of the electors.

The pope annulled the election and chose Stephen Langton, who was already cardinal priest of St. Chrysogenus. This was in the year 1207. He was elected by the monks, and consecrated in Rome. John in his fury, refused to receive the archbishop, and drove the monks of Canterbury out of England. The pope, after sending many envoys and writing many letters to the king without effect, threatened to lay an interdict upon the kingdom. John persisted in his obstinacy, and the interdict was promulgated on March 23, 1208. He then confiscated the property of the bishops, abbots, priors, and clergy; and seized all their goods for his own use. He inflicted all manner of personal indignities and cruelties upon ecclesiastics. Being conscious that his enormities had alienated the barons from him, he endeav

He

The

come to Woodstock. He then turned his
exactions and cruelties, which are well
known, against the Jews, both men and
women. In the year 1210, he exacted by
violence, vellent nollent, a hundred thou-
sand pounds sterling from the clergy,
which Matthew Paris calls exactio nefaria.
At the same time, he starved to death the
wife and son of one of his nobles.
rapine and violence of John on every class
of his people steadily growing more intol
erable, the pope on their appeal absolved
his subjects from their allegiance, and for-
bade them to consort with him in mensa,
consilio et colloquio. Geoffrey of Nor-
wich, a judge of the exchequer, therefore
resigned his office. He was thrown into
prison and laden with a cope of lead, under
which he soon died. Many nobles, prel-
ates, and others, fled from England and
died in exile. By John's command twenty-
eight youths, surrendered by the Welsh as
hostages, were hanged at Nottingham
before he would take his food. He was
then warned of the defection of his barons,
from whom, by terror, he extorted sons,
nephews, and kinsmen as hostages. Í
have simply taken the chief points of the
narrative of Matthew Paris. But it is im-
possible to give an adequate idea of the
misery of the people of England under the
tyranny of John. A perpetual cry went
up from the face of the whole land. It is
said that there was hardly a noble family
on which John had not inflicted the indeli
ble stain of some moral outrage. I have
briefly brought these things together in
order to show that it was in the cause of
the whole people that the pope had
throughout exerted his authority. He
protected their liberties and their laws.
The whole power of Innocent had been
used to restrain the violence of the king.
When, therefore, nothing availed, the
archbishop, with the bishops of London
and Ely, laid before the pope John's mani-
fold rebellions and enormities, "multimo
das rebelliones et enormitates."
The pope

Matthew Paris, Ed. Madden, London, 1866, vol. then, with the unanimous assent of the

ii. p. 80.

f Ibid. p. 87.

Ibid. pp. 96, 97.

Ibid. p. 99.

Ibid. p. 104.

Ibid. p. 114.

English people, save only the partisans of

Lingard not unreasonably calls this “a disgraceful act." It was certainly disgraceful to John, for in doing it he was insincere. It was a bid for the help of the pope against the barons. They had invoked the authority of the pope against him; but he, by making the pope his feudal suzerain, endeavoured to protect himself against them. By the same act he thought to defeat also the hopes of the king of France.

John, pronounced the sentence of deposi- | selves for His sake (who for us humbled Himtion against him.* In the face of this, self even unto death), the grace of the Holy John exacted of all the religious houses a Ghost moving us, being neither led by force, declaration that what he had extorted from nor constrained by fear, but by our free good them by violence had been given by them will, and by the common counsel of our barons, we offer, and freely grant, to God, and the freely. In 1213, the archbishop and bishops, with the concurrence of barons Holy Roman Church... the kingdom of Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and to the and people, promulgated the sentence of England and Ireland, etc.* deposition, and the king of France was charged with its execution. Great military preparations were made for the purpose in France. John likewise collected numerous forces in Kent. Nevertheless he knew himself to be excommunicated and deposed, detested by his people, forsaken by his barons, except a few partisans, and threatened with invasion by a powerful enemy. In this strait two Templars found him at Dover, and told him that a way of escape was yet open; that they were sent by Pandulph, who was on the coast of France, to propose an interview; that if he would submit and obey the Church, all might yet be averted. If not, they said the king of France was at hand, with the exiled bishops and laymen of England; and that the king of France had letters from nearly all of the nobles of England, binding themselves by fidelity to him.t

Matthew Paris gives the following ac

count of these events:

When the king had heard these things he was humbled, though against his will, and perturbed in mind, seeing that the peril of confusion hung over him on every side. Sunk therefore in despair, he acquiesced, whether he would or no, in the persuasions of Pandulph, and made his peace in a form shameful to himself. . . . The sum of which is that the king, laying aside rancour against every one, would recall all whom he had proscribed, and gave indemnity for all offences and losses. At another interview at Dover, on May 15, 1213, John resigned his crown to the pontiff, as a feudatory to the Holy See. At Michaelmas following, in the cathedral church of St. Paul, London, John renewed his submission to Nicholas, cardinal bishop of Tusculum. The words in which this act was done are as follows:

We will that it be known, that since we have in many things offended God, and our Holy Mother the Church, and therefore have great need of divine mercy, and have nothing that we can worthily offer in satisfaction to God and the Church, but ourselves and our kingdom:

We therefore being willing to humble our

It was an act of cun

ning, simply out of interest and fear. In
this sense it may well be called a dis-
graceful act. But was vassalage or feudal
dependence upon the head of the Chris-
tian world a disgrace to kings? If so,
John was not alone in his shame. It was
the condition of most of the princes of
Christendom. Nay, they were vassals one
to another. The king of Scotland was
vassal to the king of England; and the
king of England was vassal to the king
of France. Both were often seen in pub-
lic on their knees, swearing fealty, and
doing homage to their feudal lord. John
was present when William of Scotland
subjected his crown to the king of En-
gland; and nine years before, Peter of
Arragon voluntarily made himself vassal
of Innocent III., binding himself to pay
yearly 250 ounces of gold to the Holy
See. John's own father, Henry, was feu-
datory of Pope Alexander III. Henry
II. acknowledges this in a letter written to
the pope, preserved by Peter of Blois, his
own secretary. In the year after his ab-
"Vestræ juris-
solution, he wrote thus:
dictionis est regnum Angliæ, et quantum
ad feudatarii juris obligationem vobis dun-
taxat obnoxius teneor et astringor."‡
Richard, John's brother, resigned his
crown to the emperor of Germany, and
held it on the payment of a yearly rent.
John simply did what all these had done
before him. But the sting to Englishmen
is that the king of England became vas-
sal to an Italian priest. And the nursery
tales which pass for history in England
have concealed the fact that the whole of
the Christian empire of Europe was

Rymer, Fœd. tom. i. p. 176. ↑ Vol. ii. pp. 331-2.

Ibid. p. 19, note.