but he was forced by the course of events abroad to recognize
the terrible strength of the papacy and the small chance that
even a strong king could have of winning a victory over it.^
His nephew Otto IV had been obliged to retire, almost
defeated, before the enthusiasm which the young Frederick
of Hohenstaufen had aroused in his adventurous expedition
to recover the crown of Germany. Raymond of Toulouse,
John's brother-in-law, had been overwhelmed and almost
despoiled of his possessions in an attempt to protect his
subjects in their right to believe what seemed to them the
truth. For the moment the vigorous action which John had
taken after the warnings received on the eve of the Welsh
campaign had put an end to the disposition to revolt, and
had left him again all powerful. He had even been able to
extort from the clergy formal letters stating that the sums he
had forced them to pay were voluntarily granted him. But
he had been made to understand on how weak a foundation
his power rested. He must have known that Philip Augus-
tus had for some time been considering the possibility of
an invasion of England, whether invited by the barons to
undertake it or not, and he could hardly fail to dread
the results to himself of such a step after the lesson he
had learned in Normandy of the consequences of treason.
The situation at home and abroad forced upon him the con-
clusion that he must soon come to terms with the papacy,
and in November he sent representatives to Rome to signify
that he would agree to the proposals he had rejected when
made by Pandulf early in the previous year.^ Even in this
case John may be suspected, as so often before, of making a
proposition which he did not intend to carry out, or at least
of trying to gain time, for it was found that the embassy
could not make a formally binding agreement; and it is clear
that Innocent III, while ready to go on with the negotiations
and hoping to carry them to success, was now convinced that
^ Ralph of Coggeshall, 164-165. ^ Walter of Coventry, ii, Iviii. n. 4.
422 CONFLICT WITH THE PAPACY 1213
CHAP, he must bring to bear on John the only kind of pressure to
^^ which he would yield.
There is reason to believe that after his reconciliation with
the king of England Innocent III had all the letters in which
he had threatened John with the severest penalties collected
so far as possible and destroyed.^ It is uncertain, however,
whether before the end of 12 12 he had gone so far as to depose
the king and to absolve his subjects from their allegiance,
though this is asserted by English chroniclers. But there is
no good ground to doubt that in January, 12 13, he took this
step, and authorized the king of France to invade England
and deprive John of his kingdom. Philip needed no urging.
He collected a numerous fleet, we are told, of 1 500 vessels,
and a large army. In the first week of April he held a great
council at Soissons, and the enterprise was determined on
by the barons and bishops of France. At the same council
arrangements were made to define the legal relations to France
of the kingdom to be conquered. The king of England was to
be Philip's son, Louis, who could advance some show of right
through his wife, John's niece, Blanche of Castile ; but during
his father's lifetime he was to make no pretension to any
part of France, a provision which would leave the duchy of
Aquitaine in Philip's hands, as Normandy was. Louis was to
require an oath of his new subjects that they would undertake
nothing against France, and he was to leave to his father
the disposal of the person of John and of his private posses-
sions. Of the relationship between the two countries when
Louis should succeed to the crown of France, nothing was
said. Preparations were so far advanced that it was expected
that the army would embark before the end of May.
In the meantime John was taking measures for a vigorous
defence. Orders were sent out for all ships capable of carry-
ing at least six horses to assemble at Portsmouth by the
middle of Lent. The feudal levies and all men able to bear
arms were called out for April 21. The summons was obeyed
by such numbers that they could not be fed, and all but the
best armed were sent home, while the main force was collected
on Barham Down, between Canterbury and Dover, with out-
posts at the threatened ports. John has been thought by
1 Innocent III, Epp, xvi. 133. (Rymer, Fadera, i. 116.)
I3I3 JOHN- YIELDS TO THE POPE 423
some to have had a special interest in the development of the chap.
fleet ; at any rate he knew how to employ here the defensive ^^
manoeuvre which has been more than once of avail to England,
and he sent out a naval force to capture and destroy the
enemy's ships in the mouth of the Seine and at Fecamp, and
to take and burn the town of Dieppe. It was his plan also
to defend the country with the fleet rather than with the
army, and to attack and destroy the hostile armament on its
way across the channel. To contemporaries the preparations
seemed entirely sufficient to defend the country, not merely
against France, but against any enemy whatever, provided
only the hearts of all had been devoted to the king.
While preparations were being made in France for an inva-
sion of England under the commission of the pope. Innocent
was going on with the effort to bring John to his terms by nego-
tiation. The messengers whom the king had sent to Rome .
returned bringing no modification of the papal demands. At
the same time Pandulf, the pope's representative, empowered to
make a formal agreement, came on as far as Calais and sent
over two Templars to England to obtain permission for an
interview with John, while he held back the French fleet to
learn the result. The answer of John to Pandulf 's messengers
would be his answer to the pope and also his defiance of Philip.
There can be no doubt what his answer would have been if he
had had entire confidence in his army, nor what it would have
been if PhiUp's fleet had not been ready. He yielded only
because there was no other way out of the situation into
which he had brought himself, and he made his submission
complete enough to insure his escape. He sent for Pandulf,
and on May 13 met him at Dover and accepted his terms.
Four of his chief barons, as the pope required, the Earl of
Salisbury, the Count of Boulogne, and the Earls Warenne and
Ferrers, swore on the king's soul that he would keep the
agreement, and John issued letters patent formally declar-
ing what he had promised. Stephen Langton was to be ac-
cepted as Archbishop of Canterbury, and all the exiled bishops,
monks, and laymen were to be reinstated, and full compen-
sation made them for their financial losses. Two days later
John went very much further than this: at the house of
the Templars near Dover in the presence of the barons he
424 CONFLICT WITH THE PAPACY 1213
CHAP, surrendered the kingdom to the pope, confirming the act by
^^ a charter witnessed by two bishops and eleven barons, and
received it back to be held as a fief, doing homage to Pandulf
as the representative of the pope, and promising for himself
and his heirs the annual payment of 700 marks for England
and 300 for Ireland in lieu of feudal service.
Whether this extraordinary act was demanded by Innocent
or suggested by John, the evidence does not permit us to say.
The balance of probabilities, however, inchnes strongly to the
opinion that it was a voluntary act of the king's. There is
nothing in the papal documents to indicate any such demand,
and it is hardly possible that the pope could have believed
that he could carry the matter so far. On the other hand,
John was able to see clearly that nothing else would save
him. He had every reason to be sure that no ordinary re-
conciliation with the papacy would check the invasion of
Philip or prevent the treason of the barons. If England
were made a possession of the pope, the whole situation
would take on a different aspect. Not only would all Europe
think Innocent justified in adopting the most extreme mea-
sures for the defence of his vassal, but also the most peculiar
circumstances only would justify Philip in going on with his
attack, and without him disaffection at home was powerless.
We should be particularly careful not to judge this act of
John's by the sentiment of a later time. There was nothing
that seemed degrading to that age about becoming a vassal.
Every member of the aristocracy of Europe and almost every
king was a vassal. A man passed from the classes that were
looked down upon, the peasantry and the bourgeoisie, into
the nobility by becoming a vassal. The English kings had
been vassals since feudalism had existed in England, though
not for the kingdom, and only a few years before Richard had
made even that a fief of the empire. There is no evidence
that John's right to take this step was questioned by any
one, or that there was any general condemnation of it at that
time. One writer a few years later says that the act seemed
to many *' ignominious," but he records in the same sentence
his own judgment that John was "very prudently providing
for himself and his by the deed." ^ Even in the rebellion
1 Walter of Coventry, ii. 210.
I2I3 JOHN THE POPE'S VASSAL 425
against John that closed his reign no objection was made to chap.
the relationship with the papacy, nor was the king's right ^^
to act as he did denied, though his action was alleged by his
enemies to be illegal because it did not have the consent of
the barons. John's charter of concession, however, expressly
affirms this consent, and the barons on one occasion seem to
have confirmed the assertion.^
1 Rymer, Fcedera, i. 120.
CHAPTER XXI
THE GREAT CHARTER
CHAP. The king of France may have been acting, as he would
^â– ^^ have the world believe, as the instrument of heaven to punish
the enemy of the Church, but he did not learn with any great
rejoicing of the conversion of John from the error of his
ways. Orders were sent him at once to abstain from all
attack on one who was now the vassal of the pope, and he
found it necessary in the end to obey, declaring, it is said,
that the victory was after all his, since it was due to him that
the pope had subdued England. The army and fleet pre-
pared for the invasion, he turned against his own vassal who
had withheld his assistance from the undertaking, the Count
of Flanders, and quickly occupied a considerable part of
the country. Count Ferdinand in his extremity turned to
King John and he sent over a force under command of his
brother, William Longs word, Earl of Salisbury, which sur-
prised the French fleet badly guarded in the harbour of
Damme and captured or destroyed 400 ships. If Philip
had any lingering hope that he might yet be able to carry
out his plan of invasion, he was forced now to abandon it,
and in despair of preserving the rest of his fleet, or in a fit
of anger, he ordered it to be burned.
The Archbishop of Canterbury landed in England in July,
accompanied by five of the exiled bishops, and a few days
later met the king. On the 20th at Winchester John was
absolved from his excommunication, swearing publicly that
he would be true to his agreement with the Church, and
taking an additional oath in form somewhat like the corona-
tion oath, which the archbishop required or which perhaps
the fact of his excommunication made necessary, " that holy
Church and her ministers he would love, defend, and main-
tain against all her enemies to the best of his power, that he
426
12 13 JOHN'S EXCOMMUNICATION REMOVED 427
would renew the good laws of his predecessors, and especially chap.
the laws of King Edward, and annul all bad ones, and that ^^^
he would judge all men according to just judgments of his
courts and restore to every man his rights." It is doubtful
if we should regard this as anything more than a renewal of
the coronation oath necessary to a full restoration of the
king from the effects of the Church censure, but at any rate
the form of words seems to have been noticed by those who
heard it, and to have been referred to afterwards when the
poHtical opposition to the king was taking share, a sure sign
of increasing watchfulness regarding the mutual rights of
king and subjects.^
The king was no longer excommunicate, but the kingdom
was still under the interdict, and the pope had no intention
of annulling it until the question of compensation for their
losses was settled to the satisfaction of the bishops and others
whose lands had been in the hands of the king. That was
not an easy question to settle. It was not a matter of arrears
of revenue merely, for John had not been content with the
annual income of the lands, but he had cut down forests and
raised money in other extraordinary ways to the permanent
injury of the property. In the end only a comparatively small
sum was paid, and in all probability a full payment would
have been entirely beyond the resources of the king, but at
the beginning John seems to have intended to carry out his
agreement in good faith. There is no reason to doubt the
statement of a chronicler of the time that on the next day
after his absolution the king sent out writs to all the sheriffs,
ordering them to send to St. Albans at the beginning of
August the reeve and four legal men from each township of
the royal domains, that by their testimony and that of his
own officers the amount of these losses might be determined.
This would be to all England a familiar expedient, a simple
use of the jury principle, with nothing new about it except
the bringing of the local juries together in one place, nor
must it be regarded as in any sense a beginning of repre-
sentation. It has no historic connexion with the growth of
that system, and cannot possibly indicate more than that the
idea of uniting local juries in one place had occurred to some
1 R. Coggeshall, 167; Roger of Wendover, iii. 296.
428 THE GREAT CHARTER 1213
CHAP. one. We have no evidence that this assembly was actually
^^^ held, and it is highly probable that it was not. Nor can any-
thing more be said with certainty of writs which were issued
in November of this year directing the sheriffs to send four
discreet men from each county to attend a meeting of the
council at Oxford. John himself was busily occupied with
a plan to transport the forces he had collected into Poitou
to attack the king of France there, and he appointed the
justiciar, Geoffrey Fitz Peter, and the Bishop of Winchester,
Peter des Roches, as his representatives during his absence.
These two held a great council at St. Albans in August at
which formal proclamation was made of the restoration of
good laws and the abolition of bad ones as the king had
promised, the good laws now referred to being those of
Henry I ; and all sheriffs and other officers were strictly en-
joined to abstain from violence and injustice for the future,
but no decision was reached as to the sum to be paid the
clergy.
In the meantime John was in difficulties about his pro-
posed expedition to Poitou. When he was about to set out,
he found the barons unwilling. They declared that the money
they had provided for their expenses had all been used up in
the long delay, and that if they went, the king must meet the
cost, while the barons of the north refused, according to one
account, because they were not bound by the conditions of
their tenure to serve abroad. In this they were no doubt
wrong, if services were to be determined, as would naturally
be the case, by custom ; but their refusal to obey the king on
whatever ground so soon after he had apparently recovered
power by his reconciliation with the Church is very note-
worthy. In great anger the king embarked with his house-
hold only and landed in Jersey, as if he would conquer France
alone, but he was obliged to return. His wrath, however,
was not abated, and he collected a large force and marched
to the north, intending to bring the unwilHng barons to
their accustomed obedience ; but his plan was interrupted
by a new and more serious opposition. Archbishop Stephen
Langton seems to have returned to England determined to
contend as vigorously for the rights of the laity as for those
of the Church. We are told by one chronicler that he had
1 2 13 STEPHEN LANGTON OPPOSES JOHN 429
heard it said that on August 25, while the king was on the chap.
march to the north, Stephen was presiding over a council of pre- ^^^
lates and barons at St. Paul's, and that to certain of them he
read a copy of Henry Fs coronation charter as a record of
the ancient laws which they had a right to demand of the
king. There may be difihculties in supposing that such an
incident occurred at this exact date, but something of the
kind must have happened not long before or after. If we
may trust the record we have of the oath taken by John at
the time of his absolution, it suggests that the charter of
Henry I was in the mind of the man who drew it up. Now,
at any rate, was an opportunity to interfere in protection
of clearly defined rights, and to insist that the king should
keep the oath which he had just sworn. Without hesita-
tion the archbishop went after the king, overtook him at
Northampton, where John was on the 28th, and reminded
him that he would break his oath if he made war on any of
his barons without a judgment of his court. John broke out
into a storm of rage, as he was apt to do ; ''with great noise"
he told the archbishop to mind his own business and let
matters of lay jurisdiction alone, and moved on to Not-
tingham. Undismayed, Langton followed, declaring that
he would excommunicate every one except the king who
should take part in the attack, and John was obliged again
to yield and to appoint a time for the court to try the case.
The attempt to settle the indemnity to be paid the clergy
dragged on through the remainder of the year, and was not
then completed. Councils were held at London, Walling-
ford, and Reading, early in October, November, and Decem-
ber respectively, in each of which the subject was discussed,
and left unsettled, except that after the Reading council the
king paid the archbishop and the bishops who had been
exiled 15,000 marks. At the end of September a legate
from the pope, Cardinal Nicholas, landed in England, and
to him John repeated the surrender of the crown and his
homage as the pope's vassal. Along with the question of
indemnity, that of filling up the vacant sees was discussed,
and with nearly as little result. The local officers of the
Church were disposed to make as much as possible out of
John's humiliation and the chapters to assert the right of
430 THE GREAT CHARTER 1214
CHAP, independent election. The king was not willing to allow this,
^^^ and pope and legate inclined to support him. On October 14
the justiciar, Geoffrey Fitz Peter, died. John's exclamation
when he heard the news, as preserved in the tradition of the
next generation, — "When he gets to hell, let him greet
Hubert Walter," and, as earlier in the case of Hubert him-
self, " Now by the feet of God am I first king and lord of
England," — and, more trustworthy perhaps, the rapid de-
cline of events after Geoffrey's death towards civil war and
revolution, lead us to beHeve that like many a great judge he
exercised a stronger influence over the actual history of his
age than appears in any contemporary record.
It was near the middle of February, 12 14, before John was
able to carry out in earnest his plan for the recovery of
Poitou. At that time he landed at La Rochelle with a large
army and a full military chest, but with very few English
barons of rank accompanying him. Since the close of actual
war between them Philip had made gains in one way or
another within the lands that had remained to John, and it
was time for the Duke of Aquitaine to appear to protect his
own, to say nothing of any attempt to recover his lost terri-
tories. At first his presence seemed all that was necessary ;
barons renewed their allegiance, those who had done hom-
age to Philip returned and were pardoned, castles were sur-
rendered, and John passed through portions of Poitou and
Angouleme, meeting with almost no resistance. A dash of
Philip's, in April, drove him back to the south, but the king
of France was too much occupied with the more serious dan-
ger that threatened him from the coalition in the north to give
much time to John, and he returned after a few days, leaving
his son Louis to guard the line of approach to Paris. Then
John returned to the field, attacked the Lusignans, took their
castles, and forced them to submit. The Count of La Marche
was the Hugh the Brown from whom years before he had
stolen his bride, Isabel of Angouleme, and now he proposed
to strengthen the new-made alliance by giving to Hugh's eld-
est son Isabel's daughter Joanna. On June 1 1 John crossed
the Loire, and a few days later entered Angers, whose fortifi-
cations had been destroyed by the French. The occupation
of the capital of Anjou marks the highest point of his success
I2I4 THE BATTLE OF BOUVINES 431
in the expedition. To protect and complete his new con- chap.
quest, John began at once the siege of La Roche-au-Moine, a ^^^
new castle built by William des Roches on the Loire, which
commanded communications with the south. Against him
there Louis of France advanced to raise the siege. John
wished to go out and meet him, but the barons of Poitou
refused, declaring that they were not prepared to fight battles
in the field, and the siege had to be abandoned and a hasty
retreat made across the river. Angers at once fell into the
hands of Louis, and its new ramparts were destroyed.
It was about July first that Louis set out to raise the siege
of La Roche-au-Moine, and on the 27th the decisive battle of
Bouvines was fought in the north before John had resolved
on his next move. The coalition, on which John had laboured
so long and from which he hoped so much, was at last in the
field. The emperor Otto IV, the Counts of Flanders, Bou-
logne, Holland, Brabant, and Limburg, the Duke of Lorraine,
and others, each from motives of his own, had joined their
forces with the English under the Earl of Salisbury, to over-
throw the king of France. To oppose this combination
Philip had only his vassals of northern France, without for-
eign allies and with a part of his force detached to watch
the movements of the English king on the Loire. The odds
seemed to be decidedly against him, but the allies, attacking
at a disadvantage the French army which they believed in
retreat, were totally defeated near Bouvines. The Earl of
Salisbury and the Counts of Flanders and Boulogne with
many others were taken prisoners, and the triumph of Philip
was as complete as his danger had been great. The popular
enthusiasm with which the news of this victory was received
in northern France shows how thorough had been the work
of the monarchy during the past century and how great pro-
gress had been made in the creation of a nation in feeling and
spirit as well as in name under the Capetian king. The gene-
ral rejoicing was but another expression of the force before
which in reality the English dominion in France had fallen.
The effects of the battle of Bouvines were not confined to
France nor to the war then going on. The results in Ger-
man history — the fall of Otto IV, the triumph of Frede-
rick II — we have no occasion to trace. In English history
432
THE GREAT CHARTER 12 14
CHAP, its least important result was that John was obliged to make
'^^^ peace with Philip. The treaty was dated on September 18.
A truce was agreed upon to last for five years from the fol-
lowing Easter, everything to remain in the meantime prac-
tically as it was left at the close of the war. This might be
a virtual recognition by John of the conquests which PhiUp
had made, but for him it was a much more serious matter
that the ruin of his schemes left him alone, unsupported by
the glamour of a brilliant combination of allies, without pres-
tige, overwhelmed with defeat, to face the baronial opposi-
tion which in the past few years had been growing so rapidly
in strength, in intelligent perception of the wrongs that had
been suffered, and in the knowledge of its own power.
About the middle of October John returned to England to
find that the disaffection among the barons, which had ex-
pressed itself in the refusal to serve in Poitou, had not grown
less during his absence. The interdict had been removed on
July 2, John having given security for the payment of a sum