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CHAP. IV.

INGEBURGA NEGLECTED.

75

in a more dignified letter, he enjoins him at least to treat her with the respect due to the descendant of kings, to the sister of a king, the wife of a king, the daughter of a king. Philip Augustus obeyed not; he eluded even this command. Ingeburga was led from castle to castle, from cloister to cloister; she was even deprived of the offices of religion, her only consolation; her bitter complaints still reached Rome; still new remonstrances were made by Innocent; till her voice seems to have been drowned in the wars of France and England, of Philip Augustus and John; and Innocent in his new function of mediator between or rather dictator to these rival monarchs, seemed to forget the neglected and persecuted Queen. Many years after Philip is said to have made her his Queen in all outward honours, but even then she was not his wife.

* Grandes Chroniques, sub. ann. 1213.

CHAPTER V.

INNOCENT AND ENGLAND.

INNOCENT had humbled the ablest and most arbitrary King who had ruled in France since the days of Charlemagne; Philip Augustus had been reduced to elude and baffle by sullen and artful obstinacy the adversary whom he could not openly confront." But beyond the general impression thus made of the awfulness of the Papal power, the contest with Philip led to no great results either in the history of France or of the Church. In England, the strife of Innocent, first with King John, afterwards with the barons and churchmen of England, had almost immediate bearings on the establishment of the free institutions of England. During the reign of John, disastrous, humiliating to the King and to the nation, were laid the deep foundations of the English character, the English liberties, and the English greatness; and to this reign, from the attempt to degrade the kingdom to a fief of the Roman See, may be traced the first signs of that independence, that jealousy of the Papal usurpations, which led eventually to the Reformation.

Richard I.

On the accession of Innocent, so long as Richard lived, England was in close alliance with the Apostolic See. Richard was the great supporter of the Papal claimant of the Empire. At his desire Innocent demanded of Philip, whom he still called Duke of Swabia, as having succeeded to his brother's, the Emperor Henry's, patrimonial domains and treasures, the restitution of the large ransom extorted from Richard. Philip was bound to this act of honour and justice. The Duke of Austria was also threatened with excommunication, if he did not in like manner, for the welfare of his father's

a He consented to the legitimation of Philip's sons by Agnes of Meran, Nov. 2. b Epist. i. 242.

CHAP. V.

ACCESSION OF JOHN.

77

soul, who had taken an oath to make restitution, refund his share of the ransom money. The language of Innocent, when he assumes the mediation between France and England, though impartially lofty and dictatorial to both, betrays a manifest inclination towards England. The long account of insults, injuries, mutual aggressions, which had accumulated during the Crusade, on the way to the Holy Land, in the Holy Land, seems to perplex his judgment. But in France Philip Augustus is condemned as the aggressor; and peremptorily ordered to restore certain castles claimed by Richard. But Richard fell before the castle of a contumacious vassal. His brother John, by the last testament of Richard, by the free acclamation of the realms of England and of Normandy, succeeded to the throne. The Pope could not be expected, unsummoned, to espouse the claims of Arthur of Bretagne, the son of John's elder brother; for neither did Arthur nor his mother Constance appeal to the Papal See as the fountain of justice, as the protector of wronged and despoiled princes; and in most of the Teutonic nations so much of the elective spirit and form remained, that the line of direct hereditary succession was not recognised either by strict law or invariable usage. That the cause of Arthur was taken up by Philip of France, then under interdict, or at least threatened with interdict, was of itself fatal to his pretensions at Rome. But neither towards the King John, in whom he hoped to find a faithful ally, a steady partisan of his Emperor Otho, does Innocent arm himself with that moral dignity which will not brook the violation of the holy Sacrament of Marriage: the dissolution of an inconvenient tie, which is denied to Philip Augustus, is easily accorded, or at least not imperiously, or inexorably denied, to John. There was a singular resemblance in the treatment of their wives by these sovereigns; ex- John's dicept that in one respect, the moral delinquency of marriage. John was far more fragrant; on the other hand, his wife acquiesced in the loss of her royal husband with much greater facility than the Danish princess repudiated by

Epist. i. 230.

vorce and

d Richard died April 6, 1199.

Philip of France. John had been married for twelve years to the daughter of the Earl of Gloucester; an advantageous match for a younger prince of England. On the throne, John aspired to a higher, a royal connexion. He sought a dissolution of his marriage on the plea of almost as remote affinity. The Archbishop of Bourdeaux was as obsequious to John as the Archbishop of Rheims had been to Philip Augustus. Negotiations had been concluded for an alliance with a daughter of the King of Portugal, when John suddenly became enamoured of Isabella, the betrothed wife of the Count de la Mark. Isabella was dazzled by the throne; fled with John, and was married to him. Such an outrage on a great vassal was a violation of the first principle of feudalism; from that day the Barons of Touraine, Maine, and Anjou held themselves absolved from their fealty to John. But although this flagrant wrong, and even the sin of adultery, is added to the repudiation of his lawful wife, no interdict, no censure is uttered from Rome either against the King or the Archbishop of Bourdeaux. The Pope, whose horror of such unlawful connexions is now singularly quiescent, confirms the dissolution of the marriage, against which, it is true, the easy Havoise enters no protest, makes no appeal; for John, till bought over with the abandonment of Arthur's claim to the throne by the treacherous Philip Augustus, is still the supporter of Otho; he is the ally of the Pope, for he is the ally of the Papal Emperor.

Philip Au

Philip, embarrassed by his quarrel with the Pope, and Contest with the wavering loyalty of his own great vassals, who gustus. had quailed under the interdict, though he never lost sight of the great object of his ambition, the weakening the power of England in her Continental dominions and her eventual expulsion, at first asserted but feebly the rights of Arthur to the throne; he deserted him on the earliest prospect of advantage. In the treaty confirmed by the marriage of Louis, the son of Philip, with John's kins

Epist. v. 19, contains a sort of reproof to John for his propensity to the sins of the flesh, and gently urges repentance; but to the divorce I see

no allusion, as Dr. Paulli seems, after Hurter, to do. Geschichte Englands, p. 304.

CHAP. V.

DEATH OF ARTHUR.

A.D. 1200.

79

woman, Blanche of Castile, Philip abandoned the claims of Arthur to all but the province of Bretagne; John covenanted to give no further aid in troops or money to Otho of Brunswick in his strife for the Empire.

moned to do

But the terrors of the interdict had passed away. Philip Augustus felt his strength: the Barons of Anjou, Touraine, Poitou, Maine, were eager to avenge the indignity offered to Hugh de la Mark. De la Mark appealed to his sovereign liege lord the King of France for redress. Philip summoned John to do homage for Aquitaine; to John sumanswer in his courts of Paris for the wrong done homage." to De la Mark. Nor did John (so complete was the theory of feudal subordination) decline the summons. He promised to appear; two of his castles were pledged as surety that he would give full satisfaction in the plenary court of his sovereign. But John appeared not; his castles refused to surrender; Philip renewed his alliance with Arthur of Bretagne, asserted his claim to all the continental possessions of the King of England, contracted Arthur in marriage with his own daughter, as yet but of tender age. The capture, the imprisonment, the Death of death of Arthur, raised a feeling of deep horror Arthur. against John, whom few doubted to have been the murderer of his nephew.s Philip of France now appeared in arms under the specious title, not only of a sovereign proceeding against a wrong-doing and contumacious vassal, but as the avenger of a murder perpetrated on his nephew, it was said by some by the hand of John himself. John had been summoned, at the accusation of the Bishop of Rennes, to answer for this crime before the Peers of France at Paris. Again John appeared

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War.

vida." Radulph de Coggeshal is bolder (he wrote in France). From his relation, through Holinshed, Shakspeare drew his exquisitely pathetic scene.

h"Adeo quidem ut rex Johannes suspectus habebatur ab omnibus, quasi illum manu propriâ peremisset, unde multi animos avertentes a rege semper deinceps, ut ausi sunt, nigerrimo ipsum odio perstrinxerunt."-Wendover (ed. Coxe), p. 171.

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