relinquished; and meditated, at the same time, the most fatal vengeance against his enemies; that he sent his emissaries abroad to collect an army of mercenaries and Brabaçons, and dispatched messengers to Rome, for the purpose of securing the protection of the papal see; and that, whilst his agents were employed in executing their several commissions, he himself remained in the Isle of Wight, awaiting the arrival of the foreign soldiers.

"That these statements are partially if not wholly unfounded will appear by the attestations to the royal letters during the period in question.

"Previously to the sealing of Magna Charta, namely, from the Ist to the 3rd of June, 1215, the king was at Windsor, from which place he can be traced, by his attestations, to Odiham, and thence to Winchester, where he remained till the 8th. From Winchester he went to Merton; he was again at Odiham on the 9th, whence he returned to Windsor, and continued there till the 15th: on that day he met the barons at Runnemede by appointment, and there sealed the great charter of English liberty. The king then returned to Windsor, and remained there until the 18th of June, from which time until the 23rd he was every day both at Windsor and Runnemede, and did not finally leave Windsor and its vicinity before the 26th of the same month; John then proceeded through Odiham to Winchester, and continued in that city till the end of June. The first four days of July he passed at Marlborough, from which place he went to Devizes, Bradenstoke, and Calne; reached Cirencester on the 7th, and returned to Marlborough on the following day. He afterwards went to Ludgershall, and through Clarendon into Dorsetshire, as far as Corfe castle, but returned to Clarendon on the 15th of July, from which place he proceeded, through Newbury and Abingdon, to Woodstock, and thence to Oxford, where he arrived on the 17th of that month; and in a letter dated on the 15th of July, between Newbury and Abingdon, the king mentions the impossibility of his reaching Oxford by the 16th, according to his appointment with the barons."

The First Naval Victory.

SOUTHEY.

Amid all his disputes with the pope and with his barons, John never neglected his naval concerns, and, unpopular as he was with other classes, never lost the good-will of his seamen. In the seventh year of his reign, with the advice of his council, he prepared for attempting to recover Normandy, of which Philip Augustus had possessed himself; a strong national feeling was manifested in favour of this just enterprise, the barons vied with each other in their preparations, and so large a fleet was collected at Portsmouth, that it was believed so many ships had never been brought together before; the number of mariners on board is stated at 14,000, who had come from all parts of the kingdom to serve their country. But when all things were ready, and all in heart and hope, the archbishop Hubert and the earl of Pembroke, for reasons which have not been explained, compelled, rather than persuaded him to abandon his intention. Bitter curses were breathed by the sailors against the evil counsellors, as they deemed them, who had frustrated this mighty preparation; and John himself was "pinched so near the heart," by the disgrace and disappointment, that having got to Winchester, he repented him of having yielded, turned back to Portsmouth, embarked, sailed out of the harbour, and for two days kept hovering off, in hopes that the troops which had been dismissed would, when they heard this, follow his example; but it was too late.

An effort was made with more effect when Philip Augustus, under the pope's sanction, prepared, as the champion of the Papal church, to invade England, and depose an excommunicated king. Philip had long been provided for such an enterprise, little caring under what pretext he might undertake it. The possession of Normandy had given him more ships and seamen than any former king of France had ever commanded; and, collecting them from other ports, wherever they were to be obtained,

he had brought together, in the three harbours of Boulogne, Calais, and Gravelines, not less than 1700 vessels. His army, too, was most formidable in number. Distracted as England was with internal troubles, greater vigour was never shown in its counsels than at this time. An embargo had been laid upon all ships capable of carrying six or more horses; in whatever ports they might be found, they were, if laden, to be unladed, and sent round to Portsmouth, well provided with good seamen, and well armed; and the bailiffs of the respective ports were to see that they were properly furnished with moveable platforms for embarking and disembarking the horses. The fleet which he assembled is said to have been far stronger than the French king's, but this probably means in the size and equipment of the ships, and in the skill of the sailors, not in numbers. And, "he had got together such an army of men out of all the parts of his realm, . both of lords, knights, gentlemen, yeomen, and other of the commons, ... that notwithstanding all the provision of victuals that might possibly be recovered, there could not be found sufficient store to sustain the huge multitudes of those that were gathered along the shore." A great number of the commons, therefore, were discharged, and sent home, retaining only the men-at-arms, yeomen, and freeholders, with the cross-bowmen or arbalisters, and archers. Even after this reduction, 60,000 men were assembled on Barham Downs; so that the chronicler might well say, "If they had been all of one mind, and well bent towards the service of their king and defence of their country, there had not been a prince in Christendom but that they might have defended the realm of England against him." The land preparations were rendered unnecessary, by John's submission to the legate, Pandulph; when he surrendered his crown, and, receiving it again from him, as the pope's representative, swore fealty to the Church of Rome, and bound his kingdom, by a written instrument, to an annual payment of 1000 marks for ever, in token of vassalage.

In those days this was not regarded as so unworthy an act as it is properly now considered; nor was it in fear of the foreign

Base as he was, he was
When Philip Augustus

enemy, that John had consented to it. of a race that never failed in courage. was informed, by the legate, that the king of England had submitted, and that, consequently, his aid was no longer required for reducing the disobedient son of the Church, he was exceedingly indignant, and his first impulse was to go forward with the enterprise, in defiance of the pope. All his nobles and feudatory chiefs concurred in this, except the earls of Boulogne and Flanders, whom a reasonable jealousy of Philip had induced to treat secretly with John. Their opposition frustrated his design, and he immediately turned his arms upon Flanders. Fernando de Portugal, son of king Sancho I., was then earl of Flanders, in right of Joanna his wife, a man more brave than fortunate; the name, indeed, in his family, seems to have carried misfortune with it. Philip had extorted from him, on his marriage, the towns of Aire and St. Omer, and the sense of the wrong then done him was rankling in his mind. On the other hand, he had not acted now as an open enemy; and Philip, in the temper of one who was punishing a vassal for his breach of faith, besieged, and with little opposition took Calais, took possession of Ypres and Bruges, and then laid siege to Ghent, sending his fleet, meantime, to Damme. Fernando sent over to England for immediate aid, and John forthwith despatched 500 sail, under William, earl of Holland, William Longspear, earl of Salisbury, his own bastard brother, and the earl of Boulogne.

Damme, which was now to be the scene of the first great naval action between the English and French, and the first great naval victory recorded in the English annals, was at that time the port of Bruges, from whence it is about a mile distant, being situated near the junction of the rivers Rey and Lieve. It is supposed to have been a settlement of the Alans, and that the dog, in the arms of the town, and of which a fabulous story has been invented, refers to this origin. Then, and long afterwards, the sea came up to its walls; till, about the year 1180, the Hollanders, with their characteristic and admirable industry, recovered here a track of rich country from the waters; and it was from the dam which

they constructed for its defence, and which extends from thence to Sluys, that the town took its name. A channel for the waters was made at the same time, two miles in length, forming what, for the vessels of that age, was a capacious harbour. The Hollanders, by whom this great work was planned and executed, settled there as a colony, greatly to the advantage of Flanders, from the earls of which province they obtained, in addition to the common privileges of Flemish subjects, an exemption from customs throughout the Flemish territory. In the course of little more than thirty years, Damme had become the great emporium of those parts. No other part of Europe had advanced so rapidly in civilization as this province. In the eighth century it was mostly covered with wood, and so infamous for the robberies and murders committed upon those whose ill-fortune led them thither, that it was called the merciless forest; in the ninth, when the growing influence of religion had mitigated this barbarity, lands were given to any who would settle on them; and in the tenth, when the manufactures to which it owed its early prosperity, and its after troubles, were introduced into Ghent, "a rate of barter was fixed, for want of money." By this rate, two fowls went for one goose, two geese for one pig, three lambs for a sheep, and three calves for a cow. In a little time the province was intersected with canals, and towns and cities arose and flourished; many of which, though fallen to decay, bear witness still, in the splendour of their public buildings, to their former affluence. Ghent was now the seat of its manufactures, Bruges of its merchants, and Damme was its port; whither, as to a certain mart, the produce of the country, the furs of Hungary, the wines of Gascony and Rochelle, and the cloths of England, were brought, and from whence they were distributed to all parts.

When the French arrived off this harbour, they offered peace to the inhabitants, who were wholly incapable of defending themselves against such a force; they obtained the money which they demanded as its price, and then they plundered the place. Not satisfied with this, they proceeded to ravage the country round about; and the sailors, as well as land forces, were thus employed,

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