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CHAPTER IV.

THE GIVING OF MAGNA CHARTA.

STATE OF THE KINGDOM AT THE ACCESSION OF JOHN-EARLY ACTS OF HIS REIGN
-MURDER OF PRINCE ARTHUR-REFUSAL OF THE BARONS TO FOLLOW JOHN
INTO FRANCE-HIS SEIZURE OF THE TEMPORALITIES OF CANTERBURY—AP-
POINTMENT OF LANGTON TO THE ARCHBISHOPRIC-ENGLAND UNDER INTER·
DICT THE KINGDOM GIVEN BY THE POPE TO PHILIP OF FRANCE-THE INTER-
DICT REMOVED-JOHN'S OATH BEFORE RECEIVING ABSOLUTION-DISCOVERY
OF THE CHARTER OF HENRY I. BY LANGTON-THE BARONS SWEAR TO
MAINTAIN IT, AND DEMAND THAT JOHN SHALL RATIFY IT-THEY RAISE AN
ARMY- -LONDON DECLARES FOR THE BARONS-THE MEETING AT RUNNYMEDE
THE CHARTER GRANTED-ITS
-ITS CHARACTER AND PROVISIONS-RECOGNITION

OF THE RIGHT OF REBELLION-HUME AND HALLAM ON THE CHARTER.

Ar the accession of King John the power of Parliament as a legislative body was distinctly recognized, but it is doubtful whether any clear idea of the vast importance of the privilege of parliamentary legislation had been formed. During the various disturbances which had ensued upon the seizure of the crown by princes who had no legitimate title to it, the barons had been taught their power in the disposition of a vacant throne. Their power to check a crowned king they had not yet learned. Again, the insecurity of these usurping princes had from time to time induced them to give charters promising to rule their people by the good laws of the Saxon kings. But of the purport of these laws the people were profoundly ignorant. Contrasted with the violence of Norman rule, the days of equitable Saxon government were remembered in the popular traditions as the golden age, and these charters of the kings were gratifying to a general desire, however vague, for fixed and fundamental laws. But they were never clearly understood. The Norman barons knew, as yet, no government but that of feudalism; the

Saxon people had been crushed till they had lost the recoliection of their ancient liberties; and neither had yet learned their power to force a sovereign to respect his subjects' rights. Hence the successive charters were neglected equally by prince and people, and soon passed into oblivion. In the reign of John, only one copy of the charter given by Henry I. was to be found in the whole kingdom, though a copy had been sent to every shire and diocese throughout the land! It needed such a reign as that of John to rouse the people to activity. Had he possessed the strong will, the sagacious forecast, and the iron nerve of the Conqueror, the history of England might have been like that of France; but his unequalled course of murder, meanness, falsehood, perjury, licentiousness, extortion, and oppression roused both lords and commons to a sense of the necessity of a fixed constitution which should bind both prince and people; his pusillanimous weakness was a tower of strength to the great confederacy which was formed to vindicate their liberties; and the sound wisdom and discretion of the patriot archbishop, Stephen Langton, guided them in their endeavors, till the fundamental law of England, which has never to this day been changed but by the development of its inestimable principles, was laid down in the instrument called MAGNA CHARTA.

The early acts of John's reign were but little likely to inspire the people with respect for royalty. He was not the true heir to the throne; for though his elder brother Geoffrey was dead, Arthur the son of Geoffrey still lived, and was, in right, the king of England. Not content, however, with supplanting Arthur, John, having defeated his adherents and gained possession of his person, murdered him in prison. This foul assassination of a child whose early qualities gave promise of a noble manhood, inspired the barons with resentment and disgust. Philip of France, availing himself of the occasion furnished by the crime of John and the alienation of his subjects, marched upon, and took possession of the Norman duchy; and when John summoned the English barons to accompany his standard in an expedition for the recovery of his lost province, they indignantly refused to follow him. Thenceforward he applied himself to the oppression of his English subjects. The limits of our space forbid us to relate the story of his tyranny.

Unlimited licentiousness, rapacity, and prodigality, and a succession of arbitrary fines, imprisonments, and taxes, are the chief points of the tale. At length his insolent extortion brought him into conflict with the only power which could effectually cope with him, -the church. The see of Canterbury falling vacant, he seized upon its lands and revenues, expelled the monks of Christ Church, who, according to their ancient custom, were about to elect a prelate to the vacant see, and of his own power named a new archbishop. Innocent III., the reigning Pope, was little likely to submit to this invasion of the church's rights. He instantly annulled the appointment of the king, required him to give up the church lands, with the revenues he had appropriated, and appointed Stephen Langton to the archiepiscopal throne. John's reply to the Pope's requisitions was another seizure of church lands; and Innocent laid England under interdict. For nearly seven years England groaned beneath that fearful sentence. Public worship was suspended, and the people lived and died without the offices of their religion, and, so far as priestly ministrations were concerned, without God in the world. Had John possessed the affections of his people, he might have defied the Pope, declared the independence of the English Church, and so anticipated, partially at least, the events of a much later period. But his arbitrary conduct had arrayed all classes of his subjects in hostility against him. Laity and clergy, lords and commons hated and despised him; and when Innocent, proceeding to extremities, declared his people released from their allegiance, and appointed Philip II., king of France, to the throne of England, so few of the barons seemed disposed to stand by him, that, as we learn from Matthew Paris, the historian of his reign, he actually sent for succor to Murmelius, the Moslem king of Spain and Africa, offering, in return for his assistance, to apostatize to Islamism, and hold his kingdom as a vassal of the Moorish king. But Philip gave him short space to make such alliances; and John submitted to the Pope on terms which showed how utterly he was humiliated. He submitted to the censures of the church, resigned his crown to the Pope's legate, and received it back again as the Pope's gift, to be held as the Pope's vassal. On these conditions Innocent consented to require the French king to

abstain from his invasion of the realm of England. The interdict was raised, and John was solemnly absolved at Winchester by the primate Langton, in June, 1214. But before the primate gave him absolution, he required the king to swear "that he would diligently defend the ordinances of Holy Church, and that his hand should be against all her enemies; that the good laws of his ancestors, and especially those of King Edward the Confessor, whose restoration had been promised by the charter of Henry I., should be recalled, and evil ones destroyed; and that his subjects should receive justice, according to the upright decrees of his courts." John also swore "that all corporations and private persons whom the interdict had damaged should receive a full restitution of all which had been taken away, before the time of the approaching Easter, if his sentence of excommunication were first removed. He swore, moreover, fidelity and obedience to Pope Innocent and his catholic successors, and that he would give them that superiority which was already contained in writing."

John held his oaths but lightly, and months passed away without redress of grievances, without the abolition of oppressive laws and customs, and without that restoration of the ancient constitutions which had been promised by the charter of King Henry, and confirmed by John's oath.

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It is probable that John was not aware of the importance of that charter. Certainly the barons were in utter ignorance of its provisions. But the patriotic Langton was as learned as he was heroic and discreet. Calling the barons to him, he informed them that he had a copy of the charter of King Henry, read it to them article by article, and, as he did so, showed them its immense importance, and the ease with which it might be applied to their existing circumstances. Overjoyed at this discovery, and filled with hope, the barons joined in a confederacy, with the primate at their head, to force John to make good the oaths which he had taken; and the hands of the confederates were strengthened on the very threshold of their enterprise by an outbreak of the king's unbridled lechery." Assembling at the abbey of St. Edmund, in Edmundsbury, on the 20th of November (St. Edmund's day), they swore before the high altar to stand by each other, and make war

upon the king till he should by a solemn charter ratify their liberties, with provisions under which they might themselves be able to compel him to respect them. On Epiphany they came to him with such a military force as challenged his respect, and solemnly demanded that he would make good his oaths. John asked till Easter to consider their demands, in hopes that through the papal influence he might be able to dissolve the confederacy. The time was granted, but John's hopes were disappointed. In the week succeeding Easter the confederates assembled at the town of Stamford with two thousand knights and their retainers. Thence they

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marched to Brackly on the 27th of April. John held the town of Oxford, fifteen miles from Brackly, and despatched the archbishop with the earl of Pembroke to the camp of the confederates. When they returned, they brought an abstract of the articles demanded by the barons, which was subsequently made the basis of the charter, and announced their purpose to make war upon the king till he should grant what they desired. "And why," said the excited monarch with a scornful sneer, And why demand they not my kingdom likewise? By God's teeth, I will never grant them liberties that will make myself a slave." It was not long before he found it necessary to break this oath like the rest. London declared for the confederates, and it is said that London even then could muster 80,000 men-at-arms. The barons took possession of the capital on the 22d of May, and issued writs of summons to all the nobles who had not yet joined them. The effect was magical; and in a few days John was left at Oldham with but seven attendants, some even of whom, though they had not deserted him, were cordially in sympathy with the confederates. The king had no choice left but to comply with the demands of his revolted barons; and, after a few unimportant preliminaries, met them on the plain of Runnymede, beside the Thames, where they encamped apart, like enemies, from June 15th till June 19th, when the negotiations were completed. The articles embodied in the first demand of the confederates were, with some verbal alterations, made into a royal grant; and MAGNA CHARTA, the GREAT CHARTER of the Liberties of England, signed and sealed by the king's hand, was solemnly declared, with grave formalities, to be, what it has ever since

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