field, and accused of preferring the selfish security and luxury
of the capital. This was their conduct during the whole of
the winter while their strongholds were captured and their
lands devastated in all parts of England by the forces of
their enemy, for John continued his campaign. Soon after
the capture of Rochester he marched through Windsor to the
north of London and, leaving a part of his army under the
Earl of Salisbury to watch the barons and to lay waste
their lands in that part of the country, he passed himself
through the midlands to the north, destroying everything be-
longing to his enemies that he could find and not always dis-
tinguishing carefully between friends and foes. England
had not for generations suffered such a harrying as it re



I



I2i6 THE BARONS SEEK AID ABROAD



443



ceived that winter. So great was the terror created by the chap.
cruelties practised that garrisons of the barons' castles, it is ^^^
said, fled on the news of the king's approach, leaving the
castles undefended to fall into his hands. The march ex-
tended as far as Scotland. Berwick was taken and burnt,
and the parts of the country about were laid waste in re-
venge for the favour which King Alexander had shown the
barons. In March, 12 16, John returned to the neighbour-
hood of London, leaving a new track of devastation further
to the east, and bringing with him a great store of plunder.

During the winter the barons had kept up their negotia-
tions with Louis, and an agreement had finally been made.
They had pledged themselves to do homage to Louis and
accept him as king, and had sent to France twenty-four
hostages "of the noblest of the land" in pledge of their
fidelity. Louis in return sent over small bodies of men to
their aid and promised himself to follow in person in the
spring. To this step the barons were indeed driven, unless
they were prepared to submit, because of the strength the
king had gained since the signing of the charter and their
own comparative weakness. Why this change had taken
place so soon after the barons had been all-powerful can-
not now be fully explained, but so far as we can see the
opinion of a contemporary that they would have been over-
come but for the aid of the French is correct. Against the
invasion of Louis, John had two lines of defence, the pope
and the fleet. Innocent, who had once favoured a transfer
of the EngHsh crown to Louis, must now oppose it. When
he learned how far preparations for the expedition had gone,
he sent a legate, Cardinal Gualo, to France to forbid any
further step. Gualo was received by Philip and his son at
Melun on April 25. There before the king and the court
the case was argued between the cardinal and a knight
representing Louis, as if it were a suit at law to be decided
in the ordinary way. Louis's case was skilfully constructed
to deprive the legate of his ground of interference, but his
assertions were falsehoods or misrepresentations. John had
been condemned to death for the murder of Arthur — the
first occasion on which we hear of this — and afterwards
rejected by the barons of England for his many crimes, and



444 THE GREAT CHARTER 1216

CHAP, they were making war on him to expel him from the king-
^^^ dom. John had surrendered the kingdom to the pope without
the consent of the barons, and if he could not legally do this,
he could by the attempt create a vacancy, which the barons
had filled by the choice of Louis. The legate, apparently
unable to meet these unexpected arguments, asserted that
John was a crusader and therefore under the protection of
the apostolic see. For Louis it was answered that John had
been making war on him long before he took the cross and
had continued to do so since, so that Louis had a right to
go on with the war. The legate had no answer to this, though
it was false, but he prohibited Louis from going and his father
from allowing him to go. Louis, denying the right of his
father to interfere with his claims in a land not subject to
the king of France, and sending an embassy to argue his case
before the pope, went on with his preparations. Philip
Augustus carefully avoided anything that would bring him
into open conflict with Innocent and threw the whole respon-
sibility on his son.

Louis landed in England in the Isle of Thanet on May 21.
John had collected a large and strong fleet to prevent his
crossing, but a storm just at the moment had dispersed it and
left the enemy a clear passage. John, then at Canterbury,
first thought to attack the French with his land forces, but
fearing that his hired troops would be less loyal to a mere pay-
master than to the heir and representative of their suzerain
in France, he fell back and left the way open for Louis's
advance to London. Soon after landing, Louis sent forward
a letter to the Abbot of St. Augustine's in Canterbury, who, he
feared, was about to excommunicate him. In this letter which
was possibly intended also for general circulation, he repeated
the arguments used against the legate with some additional
points of the same sort, and explained the hereditary claim of
his wife and his own right by the choice of the barons. The
document is a peculiar mixture of fact and falsehood, but it
was well calculated to impose on persons to whom the minor
details of history would certainly be unknown. Rochester
castle fell into the hands of the French with no real resist-
ance ; and on June 2, Louis was welcomed in London with
great rejoicing, and at once received the homage of the



I2i6 JOHN FALLS ILL 445

barons and of the mayor. Louis's arrival seemed to turn the chap.
tide for the moment against the king. He retreated into the ^"^^
west, while the barons took the field once more, and with
the French gained many successes in the east and north,
particularly against towns and castles. On June 25, Louis
occupied Winchester. Barons who had been until now faith-
ful to the king began to come in and join the French as
their rapid advance threatened their estates ; among them was
even John's brother, the Earl of SaUsbury. Early in July
Worcester was captured and Exeter threatened, and John
was forced back to the borders of Wales. This marks, how-
ever, the limit of Louis's success. Instead of pushing his
advance rapidly forward against the one important enemy,
the king himself, he turned aside to undertake some difficult
sieges, and made the further mistake of angering the English
barons by showing too great favour to his French compan-
ions. Dover castle seemed to the military judgment of the
French particularly important as " key of England," and
for more than three months Louis gave himself up to the
effort to take it.

For the first of these months, till the end of August, John
remained inactive on the borders of Wales. The death of
Innocent III made no change in the situation. His succes-
sor Honorius III continued his English policy. With the
beginning of September the king advanced as if to raise the
siege of Windsor, but gave up the attempt and passed on east
into Cambridgeshire, ravaging horribly the lands of his en-
emies. The barons pursued him, and he fell back on Lincoln
from which as a centre he raided the surrounding country for
more than a fortnight. On October 9, he marched eastwards
again to Lynn which, like most of the towns, was favour-
able to him, and there he brought on a dysentery by over-
eating. From that time his physical decline was rapid. His
violent passions, utterly unbridled, tore him to pieces more and
more fiercely as he recognized his own loss of strength and
learned of one misfortune after another. He would not rest,
and he would not listen to counsel. On the nth he went on
to Wisbech, and on the next day he insisted on crossing the
Wash, without knowing the crossing or regarding the tide. He
himself passed in safety, but he lost a part of his troops and



446 THE GREAT CHARTER 1216

CHAP, all his baggage with his booty, money, and jewels. At night
^^^ at Swineshead abbey, hot with anger and grief, and feverish
from his illness, he gave way to his appetite again, as always,
and ate to excess of peaches and new cider. After a rest of a
day he pushed on with difficulty to Sleaford. There mes-
sengers reached him from his garrison in Dover asking his
permission to surrender if he could not relieve them at once,
and the news brought on a new passion of anger. He in-
sisted on going one stage further to Newark, although he had
already recognized that his end was near. There three days
later, on the 19th of October, he died. The teachings of the
Church which he had shghted and despised during his life
he Kstened to as his end drew near, and he confessed and
received the communion. He designated his son Henry, now
nine years old, as his heir, and especially recommended him
to the care of the Earl of Pembroke, and appointed thirteen
persons by name to settle his affairs and to distribute his pro-
perty according to general directions which he left. At his
desire he was buried in Worcester cathedral and in the habit
of a monk.

It has already been suggested that the reigns of Richard
and John form a period of transition to a new age. That
period closes and the new age opens with the granting of the
Great Charter and the attempted revolution which followed.
The reign of John was the culmination of a long tendency in
English history, most rapid since the accession of his father,
towards the establishment of an absolutism in which the
rights of all classes would disappear and the arbitrary will of
the king be supreme. The story of his reign should reveal
how very near that result was of accomplishment. A mon-
archy had been forming in the last three reigns, and very
rapidly in the reign of John, capable of crushing any ordinary
opposition, disregarding public opinion and traditional rights,
possessing in the new judicial system, if regarded as an organ
of the king's will alone, an engine of centralization, punish-
ment, and extortion, of irresistible force, and developing
rapidly in financial matters complete independence of all con-
trolling principles. Though the barons were acting rather
from personal and selfish motives, freedom for all classes
depended on the speedy checking of this steady drift of two



1216 A NEW AGE



447



generations. The reigns of Richard and John may be called chap.
transitional because it is in them that the barons came to see ^^^
clearly the principles on which successful resistance could be
founded and the absolutist tendency checked. The embodi-
ment of these principles in permanent form in the Great
Charter to be accepted by the sovereign and enforced in
practice, introduces an age, the age of constitutional growth,
new in the history of England, and in the form and impor-
tance of its results new in the history of the world.



APPENDIX

ON AUTHORITIES
1066-1216

While the material on which the history of any period of the Middle
Ages is based is scanty as compared with the abundant supply at the ser-
vice of the writer of modern history, the number of the original sources for
the Norman and early Angevin period is so great as to render impossible
any attempt to characterize them all in this place. The more important
or more typical chroniclers have been selected to give an idea of the nature
of the material on which the narrative rests.

The medieval chronicler did not content himself with writing the history
of his own time. He was usually ambitious to write a general history from
the beginning of the world or from the Christian era at least, and in com-
paratively few cases began with the origin of his own land. For a know-
ledge of times before his own he had to depend on his predecessors in the
same line, and often for long periods together the new book would be only
an exact copy or a condensation of an older one. If several earlier writers
were at hand, the new text might be a composite one, resting on them all,
but really adding nothing to our knowledge. As the writer drew nearer
to his own time, local tradition or the documents preserved in his monas-
tery might give him information on new points or fuller information on
others. On such matters his narrative becomes an independent authority of
more or less value, and much that is important has been preserved to us in
such additions to the earlier sources. Sometimes for a longer or shorter
period before his own day the writer may be using materials all of which
have been lost to us, and in such a case he is for our purposes an original
and independent authority, although in reality he is not strictly original.
Then follows a period, sometimes a long one, sometimes only a very few
years, in which his narrative is contemporary and written from his own
knowledge or from strictly first-hand materials. This is usually the most
valuable portion for the modern writer of history.

A large mass of material of great value cannot be described here. It
is made up of records primarily of value for constitutional history, charters,
writs, laws, and documentary material of all kinds, from which often new
facts are obtained for narrative history or light of great value thrown on
doubtful points, especially of chronology or of the history of individuals.
Of such a kind are the various monastic cartularies, law-books like Glanviirs,
records like the Patent, Close, and Charter Rolls, collections of letters, and
modern collections of documents like T. Rymer's Feeder a or J. H. Round's
Calendar of Docujuents Preserved in France.

The Saxon Chronicle (with translation by B. Thorpe in the Rolls
Series (1861), or C. Plummet's Two Saxon Chronicles^ 1892-99) continues

448



APPENDIX



449



during the first part of this period with its earlier characteristics unchanged,
though more full than for all but the last of the preceding age. The Con-
quest had no effect on its language, and it continued to be written in Eno -
lish until the end. The Worcester chronicle closes with the year 1079,
while the Peterborough book goes on to the coronation of Henry II in
1 1 54. Practically a contemporary record for the whole period, though not
preserved to us in a strictly contemporary form throughout, it is of especial
value for the indications it gives of the feelings of the English at a time
when they were not often recorded.

William, called of Poitiers, though a Norman, chaplain of William I
and Archdeacon of Lisieux, wrote a biography of the king, Gesta Willelmi
Ducis Normannorum et Regis AnglicB (in Migne's Patrologia Latma, 149),
of much value for the period immediately following the Conquest. It has
been thought that he was not present at the battle of Hastings, but the
account of William's movements between the battle and his coronation
contains several indications of first-hand knowledge, matters of detail
likely to be noted by an eye-witness ; and though he was a strong partisan
and panegyrist of the king, his statements of what happened may generally
be accepted. His comments and opinions, however, must be used with the
greatest caution. His work originally ended in 1071, but the last part is
now wanting, and it ends abruptly in the spring of 1067. The entire book
was used, however, by Orderic Vitalis as one of the chief sources of his
narrative, and in that form we probably have all the main facts it contained.

William of Malmesbury, born probably between 1090 and 1096,
devoted himself from early life to the study of history, seemingly attracted
to it, as he tells us himself, by the pleasure which the record of the past
gave him and by its ethical value as a collection of practical examples of
virtues and vices. This confession gives the key to the character of his
work. He prided himself on his Latin style, and with some justice. He
regarded himself not as a mere chronicler, but as a historian of a higher
rank, the disciple and first continuator of Bede. The accurate telling of
facts in their chronological order was to him less important than a well-
written and philosophical account of events selected for their importance
or interest and narrated in such a way as to bring out the character of the
actors or the meaning of the history. That he succeeded in these objects
cannot be questioned. His work is of a higher literary and philosophical
character than any written since his master Bede, or for some time after
himself. On this account, however, it gives less direct information as to
the events of the time in which he lived than we could wish, though it is a
contemporary authority of considerable value on the reign of Henry I, and
of even more value on the first years of Stephen.

His political history is contained in two works, the Gesta Regujn^ which
closes with the year 11 28, and the Historia Novella, which continues the
narrative to December, 1142 (W. Stubbs, Rolls Series, 1887-89). A third
work, the Gesta Pontifiami (N. E. S. A. Hamilton, Rolls Series, 1870),
also contains some notices of value for the political history. William
boasted a friendship with Robert, Earl of Gloucester, who was his patron,
VOL. n. 29



450 APPENDIX

and his sympathies were with the Empress's party in the civil war, but he
had also personal relations with Roger of Salisbury and Henry of Win-
chester, and was no blind partisan.

Eadmer, a monk of Canterbury, stands with William of Malmesbury in
the forefront of the historians of the twelfth century. His work, less pre-
tentious than William's, is simpler and more straightforward. Eadmer was
of Saxon birth and was brought up from childhood in Christ Church, Can-
terbury. Affectionately attached to Anselm from an early time, he became
his chaplain on his appointment as archbishop and was with him almost
constantly in his visits to court, in his troubled dealings with his sovereigns,
and in his exile abroad. With Anselm's successor. Archbishop Ralph, he
stood in equally close relations, and he was honoured and respected in the
ecclesiastical world of his time. He writes throughout the greater part of
his history, calmly and soberly, of the things that he had seen and in which
he had taken part. His chief work, the Historia Novorum (M. Rule,
Rolls Series, 1884), begins with the Conquest, but his main interest before
the days of Anselm is in the personality and doings of Lanfranc. In the
more detailed portion of his work his point of view is always the ecclesi-
astical. This is the interest which he desires to set forth most fully, but
the policy of the Church involved itself so closely in his day with that of
the State that the history of the one is almost of necessity that of the
other, and in the Historia Novorum we have a contemporary history of
English affairs, as they came into touch with the Church, of the greatest
value from the accession of Henry I to 112 1, and one which preserves a
larger proportion of the important formal documents of the time than was
usual with twelfth-century historians. He wrote also in the latter part of
this period a Vita Anselmi in which the religious was even more the lead-
ing interest than in his history, but it adds something to our knowledge of
the time.

One of the best authorities for the period from the Conquest to 1 141 is the
Historia Ecclesiastica of Orderic Vitalis (A. le Prevost, Societe de VHis-
toire de France, 1838-55) . Born in England in 1075, of a Norman father, a
clerk, and an English mother, he was sent by his father at the age often to the
monastery of St. Evroul, and there he spent his life. The atmosphere in
this monastery was favourable to study. It had an extensive library, and
Orderic had at his command good sources of information, though he
himself took no part in the events he describes. He paid some visits to
England in which he obtained information, and as he always looked upon
himself as an Englishman, his history naturally includes England as well as
Normandy. He began to write about 1123, and from that date on he may
be regarded as a contemporary authority, but from the Conquest the book
has in many places the value of an original account. It is an exasperating
book to use because of the extreme confusion in which the facts are arranged,
or left without arrangement, the account of a single incident being often in
two widely separated places. But the book rises much above the level of
mere annals, and while perhaps not reaching that of the philosophical his-
torian, gives the reader more of the feeling that a living man is writing about



APPENDIX 451

living men than is usual in medieval books. It reveals in the writer a
lively imagination, which, while it does not affect the historical value of the
narrative, gives it a pictorial setting. Orderic's interest in the minuter de-
tails of life and in the personality of the men of his time imparts a strong
human element to the book ; nor is the least useful feature of the work the
writer's critical judgment on men and events, generally on moral grounds,
but often assisting our knowledge of character and the causes of events.

Henry, Archdeacon of Huntingdon's Historia Anglorum (T. Arnold,
Rolls Series, 1879) becomes original, to our present knowledge at least, with
the closing of the manuscript of the Saxon chronicle which he had been
following, probably in 1121, and his narrative is contemporary from the
last years of that decade to the coronation of Henry H. He adds, however,
surprisingly little to our knowledge of the twenty-five years during which he
was writing the history of his own time. He had an active imagination
and loved to embellish the facts which he had learned with little details
that he thought likely to be true. The main value of the original portion
of his history lies in its confirmation of what we learn from other sources.

The chronicle of Florence of Worcester (B. Thorpe, Engl. Hist.
Soc, 1848-49) is continued by John of Worcester as a source of primary
importance to 1141 and by others afterwards. Florence himself died in
1 1 18, but at what point before this his own work breaks off it does not
seem possible to determine. There is at no point any real change in the
character of the chronicle. The continental chronicle which Florence had
been using as the groundwork of his account, that of Marianus Scotus,
ends with 1082, but his manuscript of the Saxon chronicle probably went
on for some distance further, and about the time of Florence's death much
use is made of Eadmer. The account is annalistic throughout, even in the
full treatment of Stephen's reign; but in its original portions, or what
seem to us original, it has the value of a contemporary record, giving us
further insight into the feelings of the English in William's reign and the
feelings and sufferings of the people of the south-west in Stephen's time.

An interesting chronicle of Stephen's reign is that by an unknown author
known as the Gesta Stephani (R. Howlett, Rolls Series, Chronicles of
Stephen., Henry //, and Richard I., iii, 1866), which existed at the begin-
ning of the seventeenth century in a single manuscript since lost. It has
been conjectured with some probability that it was written by a chaplain of
the king's brother, Henry, Bishop of Winchester. Certainly the author
had very good sources of information, writes often from personal know-
ledge, and though a strong partisan of Stephen's, is not blind to his
weaknesses and faults. While the first part of the narrative was not
written precisely at the date, the work has all the value of a contemporary
account from 1135, and from 1142 to 1147 it is almost our only authority.
The manuscript from which it was first printed in 1619 had been injured,
and the book as it now exists breaks off in the middle of a sentence in
1 147.

29*



452



APPENDIX



Robert of Torigni (R. Hewlett, Rolls Series, Chronicles of Stephen^
etc., iv, 1889) spent his life as a monk in Normandy, in the abbey of Bee till
1 1 54 and afterwards as abbot of the monastery of Mont-Saint-Michel. He
made apparently but two visits to England, of which we know no particu-
lars, but as a monk of Normandy, living in two of its most famous monas-
teries, he was interested in the doings of the English kings, particularly in
their continental policy, and more especially in the deeds of the two great
Henries. He began to write as a young man, and by 1139, about the time
he reached the age of thirty, he seems to have completed his account of the
reign of Henry I, which he wrote as an additional, an eighth, book to the
History of the Norina7is of William of Jumieges. His more extended
chronicle he had begun before leaving Bee, and he carried the work with