In this way was England attached by the strongest ties to the Continent, and to the new system of life and ecclesiastico-political constitution which had then gained the upper hand in Latin Europe. Under the next three successors of the Conqueror, none of whom enjoyed a completely legal recognition, it sometimes appeared as though England would again tear herself away from Normandy: such variances were not without influence on home affairs: in the general relations of the country they wrought no change at all. On the contrary, these were developed on a still larger scale, owing to the complicated family connexions which so peculiarly characterise that epoch. From the county of Anjou which, like the dominion of the Capets, had been formed in the struggle against the invasion of the Normans, a sovereign arose who had the right to rule the Norman conquests, the son of the Conqueror's granddaughter, Henry Plantagenet. He had become, though not without appeal to the sword, which his father wielded powerfully on his behalf, master of Normandy, and had then married Eleanor of Poitou, who brought him a great part of South France: he then succeeded more by fair means than by force in establishing his right to the throne of England. Henry was the first to establish in France the power of the great vassals, by which the crown was long in danger of being overthrown. The Kings of Castille and Navarre submitted to his arbitration. And under a sovereign whose grandfather had been King of Jerusalem, and one of the mightiest rulers of that Western kingdom established in the East, the tendencies, which had led so far, could not fail to extend themselves to the utmost in all their spheres of action? The hierarchic and chivalrous spirit of Continental Europe, which under the Normans had seized on England, was much strengthened by the accession of the Plantagenets. It thus came to pass that after the disastrous loss of Jerusalem, the knights of Anjou and of Guienne, from Brittany (for Henry had added this province also to his family possessions) and from Normandy, gathered together in London, and took the Cross in company with the English. England formed a part of the Plantagenet Empire—if we may apply this word to so anomalous a state—and contributed to its extension, even though no interest of its own was involved. But towards such a result the relations which this alliance established between England and Southern Europe had long tended. Not seldom was the military power of the provinces over the sea employed for enterprises that aimed at the direct advantage of England itself. Whether and when the German element without this influence would have become master of the British group of islands none could say. The English dominion over Ireland in particular is derived from Henry II, and his alliance at that time with the Papacy; he crossed thither under the Pope's authorisation: at the Pope's word the native kings did homage to him as their lord.[21] And the foreign-born Plantagenets struck living root in England itself. As Henry II's mother was the daughter of a princess descended from the West-Saxon house, he was hailed by the natives as their lawfully-descended King; in accordance with Edward the Confessor's prophecy, that from the severed bough should spring up a new tree: they traced his descent without scruple back to Wodan. This King, moreover, has impressed his mark deeply on English life; to this day justice is administered in England under forms established by him.

The will of destiny cannot be gainsaid. Just as Germany without its connexion with Italy, so England without its connexion with France, would never have been what it is. More than all, the great commonwealth of the western nations, whose life pervades and determines the history of each separate state, would never have come into existence. But on this ground first, amidst continual warfare, was gradually accomplished the formation of the nationalities.

NOTES:

[7] Se in omnibus eorum voluntati consensurum, consiliis acquieturum.

[8] Florentius Wigorniensis: 'Post cujus (Aethelredi) mortem episcopi abbates duces et quique nobiliores Angliae, in unum congregati pari consensu in dominum et regem Canutum sibi elegere—ille juravit, quod et secundum deum et secundum seculum fidelis eis esse vellet dominus.' The oath which Ethelred had taken was, however, only 'secundum deum.'

[9] Florentius, 593: 'Accepto pignore de manu sua nuda cum juramentis a principibus Danorum, fratres et filios Eadmundi omnino despexerunt eosque esse reges negaverunt.'

[10] In Ingulphus (Savile Script. 511) it is said expressly: per Archiepiscopum Eboracae, Aedredum (Aldredum). But it is surprising that the Bayeux Tapestry expressly names Stigand (Lancelot: Description de Tapisserie de Bayeux, in Thierry, I). Yet Harold could not possibly have meant, by passing over the Archbishop of Canterbury, to declare him to be incompetent, since he had been appointed by his party.

[11] Juramentum fidelitatis Roberti Guiscardi: 1059 in Baronius, Annales Eccles. ix. 350.

[12] The simplest statement occurs in the Carmen de bello Hastingensi, p. 352, according to which Edward promised the succession, and sent ring and sword to the duke by Harold; but as early as in William of Jumieges we have the tale of Harold's captivity in Ponthieu, and the promise made him, and the chief outlines of what in Guilielmus Pictaviensis, and Ordericus Vitalis, lies before us with further embellishments, and to which the Bayeux Tapestry (itself, too, a kind of historical memorial of the time) adds some further traits.

[13] Guilielmus Pictaviensis, Gesta Wilhelmi ducis, in Duchesne 189, already relates this in reference to the English affair.

[14] Gregorii Registrum, vii. 23; Mansi, xx. 306.

[15] William of Jumieges, Hist. vii. 34. 'Ingentem exercitum ex Normannis et Flandrensibus ac Francis ac Britonibus aggregavit.'

[16] Guilielmus Pictaviensis 197 assures us that help was promised from Germany in the name of Henry IV.

[17] William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, III. Sec. 245. 'Magis temeritate et furore praecipitati quam scientia militari Wilhelmo congressi.'

[18] 'Contulit Eguardus quod rex donum sibi regni Monstrat et adfirmat vosque probasse refert.' So Guido (Carmen de bello Hastingensi, 737) makes Ansgard on his return speak to the citizens.

[19] Ordericus Vitalis 503. In Guido the ceremony is described with the greatest calmness, as though it passed undisturbed; but the conclusion of his work seems wanting.

[20] Dialogus de Scaccario, i. 10. 'Miror singularis excellentiae principem, in subactam et sibi suspectam Anglorum gentem hac usum misericordia, ut non solum colonos indempnes servaret, verum ipsis regni majoribus feudos suos et amplas possessiones relinqueret.' In Madox, History of the Exchequer, ii. 391. In Domesday Book the memory of Edward the Confessor is always treated with the greatest respect. Ellis, Introduction to Domesday Book, i. 303.

[21] 'Ut illius terrae populus te sicut dominum veneretur.' Breve of Hadrian IV.



CHAPTER III.

THE CROWN IN CONFLICT WITH CHURCH AND NOBLES.

Highly as we may estimate the due appreciation and expression of those objective ideas, which are bound up with the culture of the human race, still the spiritual life of man is built up not so much on a devout and docile receptivity of these ideas as on their free and subjective recognition, which modifies while it accepts, and necessarily passes through a phase of conflict and opposition.

In England the authority both of Church and State now came forward with far more strength than before. The royal power was a continuation of the sovereignty inherited from Anglo-Saxon times, but, leaning on its continental resources, and supported by those who had taken part in the Conquest, it developed itself much more durably. The clergy of the land were far more closely and systematically bound to the Papacy; thus it had become more learned and more active. The one sword helped the other; just at this very time, the King and the Archbishop of Canterbury were depicted as the two strong steers that drew the plough of England.

But yet, below all this there existed a powerful element of opposition. After the new order of things had existed more than eighty years, among a portion of the Anglo-Saxon population the design was started of putting a violent end to it, of destroying at one blow all those foreigners who seemed its representatives, just as the Danes had all been murdered on one day.

It was an evil thought, and all the more atrocious because manifold ties had been already gradually formed between the two populations. How could they ever become fused into one nation if the one was always plotting the destruction of the other?

It was not merely by alliances of blood and family, but even still more by great common political and ecclesiastical interests that the English nationality, which contains both elements, was founded. And, in truth, the leading impulse towards it was that the conquerors, no less than the conquered, felt themselves oppressed by the yoke which the two supreme authorities laid on them, and hence both combined to oppose them. But centuries elapsed before this could be effected. The first occasion for it was given when the two authorities quarrelled with each other, and alternately called on the population to give its voluntary aid.

For, as the authorities which represent the objective ideas are of different origin, they have never in our Western Europe remained more than a short time in complete harmony with each other. Each retains its natural claim to be supreme, and not to endure the supremacy of the other. The one has always more before its eyes the unity of the whole, the other the needs and rights of the several kingdoms and states. Amidst their antagonism European life has moulded itself and made progress.

Close as their union was at the time of the Conquest of England, yet even then their quarrel broke out. Though the Conqueror pledged himself again to pay a tribute which the Anglo-Saxon kings had formerly charged themselves with, and which had been long unpaid, yet this was not sufficient for the Roman See: Gregory VII demanded to be recognised as feudal lord of England. But this was not what William understood, when he had allowed the papal banner to wave over the fleet that brought him to England. It was not from the Pope's authorisation that he derived his claim to the English crown, as if this had been merely transferred to him by the Papal See, but from the Anglo-Saxon kings, as whose heir and legal successor he wished to be regarded. He answered the Pope that he could enter into no other relation to him than that in which his predecessors in England had stood to previous popes.

For the first time the popes had to give up altogether the attempt to make kings their feudal dependents; they attempted, however, an almost deeper encroachment into the very heart of the royal power, when they then formed the plan of severing the spiritual body corporate, which already possessed the most extensive temporal privileges, from their feudal obligation to the sovereigns. The English kings opposed them in this also with resolution and success. Under the influence of the father of scholasticism, Anselm of Canterbury, Primate of England, a satisfactory agreement was arranged long before the Concordat was obtained in Germany. In general there was little to fear, as long as the Archbishop of Canterbury had a good understanding with the Crown; and this was the case in the first half of the 12th century, if not on all points, yet, at least on all leading questions. Far-reaching differences did not appear until the higher ecclesiastics embraced the party of the Papacy, which happened in England through Thomas Becket.

Henry II and Becket.

It was precisely from him that this would have been least expected. He had been the King's Chancellor, or if we may avail ourselves of a somewhat remote equivalent expression, his most trusted cabinet minister, and had as such, in both home and foreign affairs, rendered the most valuable services. The introduction of scutage is attributed to him, and he certainly had a large share in the acquisition of Brittany. It was through the direct influence of the King that he was elected archbishop.[22] But from that hour he seemed to have become another man. As he had hitherto rivalled the courtiers in splendour, pleasure, and pomp, so would he now by strictness of life equal the sanctity of the saints; as hitherto to the King, so did he now attach himself to the interests of the Church. It might, so we may suppose, be some satisfaction to his self-esteem, that he could now confront his stern and mighty sovereign as Archbishop 'also by the grace of God,' for so he designates himself in his letter to the King; or he might feel himself bound to recover the possessions of his Church, which had been wrested from it by the Crown or the high nobility. But, as spiritually-minded men are moved more by universal ideas than by special interests, so for Becket the determining impulse without doubt lay above all in the sympathy which he devoted to the hierarchic movement in general.

Those were the times in which the attempt of the Emperor Frederic I to call a council, and in it to decide on a contested papal election, had created general excitement among the peoples and churches of Southern Europe, which would only consent to be led by a pope independent of the empire. Driven from Italy, Alexander III, the Pope rejected by the Emperor, found a cordial reception in France; and here he now collected on his side a papal council in opposition to the imperial one, in which the cardinals, whose election the Emperor was trying to annul, and the bishops of Spain and South Italy, and those of the collective Gaulish dioceses (more than a hundred in number), and the English bishops also, gathered around him, and laid the Pope elected by the Emperor under the anathema. It was inevitable that the idea of the Church, as independent of the temporal power, should here find its strongest expression. Some canons were passed which prohibited the usurpation of ecclesiastical property by the laity, and made it a crime in the bishops to allow it.[23]

Thomas Becket was welcomed in this council with a seductive kindness; but besides this, what is harder than to set oneself against the common feeling of one's own order, when moderation already appears to be apostasy? He returned to England filled with the ideas of hierarchic independence; in preparing to carry it through, he necessarily brought on the conflict which had hitherto been avoided.

The Plantagenet King, whose whole heart was in the work of securing the obedience of the manifold provinces that had fallen to his lot; who hastened ceaselessly from one to the other (when people thought him far away in South France, he had already recrossed the sea to England), ever occupied in extending his inherited power by institutions of a legal and administrative nature, was not inclined to give way to the Church in this attempt. He would neither make the election of the higher clergy free, nor allow their excommunication to be valid without State control; he not only maintained the right of the lay courts to try ecclesiastics for heinous offences, which else often remained unpunished; but, even in the sphere of spiritual jurisdiction, he claimed to hear appeals in the last instance without regard to the Pope. In all this the lay and spiritual nobility agreed with him; in a Council at Clarendon they framed 'constitutions,' in which they declared these rules to be the law of the realm, as it had always been observed, and ought to be observed henceforth.[24]

Becket did not possess the inflexible obstinacy which distinguishes most of the champions of the hierarchy. As the accordant voice of Europe moved him to take up the hierarchic principles, so now the accordant voice of his country's rulers made an impression on him: he listened to the ecclesiastics who entreated him not to draw the King's displeasure on them, and to the laymen, who prayed him not to bring on them the necessity of executing it on the ecclesiastics: he virtually accepted the Constitutions of Clarendon. But then again he could not prevail on himself to observe them. Only when his vacillation endangered him personally, so that he could expect nothing else to follow but a condemnation by a new assembly of the royal court, did he come to a decision. Then he took the hierarchic side resolutely; in contradiction to the Constitutions, he appealed to the Pope. It is a remarkable day in English history, that 14th October 1164, on which Thomas Becket, after reading mass, appeared before the court without his archiepiscopal dress, but cross in hand. He forbade the earl, who wished to announce the judgment to him, to speak, since no layman had power to sit in judgment on his spiritual father;[25] he again put himself under the protection of God and the Roman Church, and then passed from the court, no man venturing to lay hands on him, still armed with his cross, to a church close by, from whence he escaped to the Continent. By this he brought into England the war of the two powers, which had already burst into flame in Italy and Germany. The archbishop and primate rejected the supreme judicial authority of the Curia Regis; only in the chief pontiff at Rome did he recognise his rightful judge: by undertaking to bring into full view the complete independence of the spiritual principle on this ground also, he broke down that unity of authority, which had, been hitherto maintained in the English realm, and entered into open war with his King.

Henry II was, like most of the sovereigns of that age, above all things a warrior; you could see by his stride that he spent his days on horseback; and he was an indefatigable hunter. But yet he found time besides for study; he took pleasure in solving, in the company of scholars, the difficulties of the theologico-philosophical problems which then largely occupied men's minds; there is no doubt that he also fully understood these politico-ecclesiastical questions. He was by no means a good husband, rather the contrary, but, in other things, he could control himself; he was moderate in eating and drinking. Success did not make him overweening, but all the more prudent:[26] ill-success found him resolute; yet it was remarked that he was more severe in success, milder in adversity. If contradicted, he showed all the excitability of the Southern French nature; he passed from promises to threats, from flatteries to outbursts of wrath, until he met with compliance. His administration at home witnesses to a noble conception of his mission and to a practical understanding; from his lion-like visage shone forth a pair of quiet eyes, but how suddenly did they flame up with wild fire, if the passion was roused that slumbered in the depths of his soul! It was the passion of unlimited power; an ambition for which, as he once said, the world appeared to be too small. He never forgave an opponent; he never reconciled himself with an enemy or took him again into favour.

He would of himself have been much inclined to abandon Alexander III, and attach himself to the Pope set up by the Emperor: his ambassadors took part in a German diet at which the most extreme steps were approved of. But Henry was not sufficiently master of his clergy nor, above all, of his people for this; the solemn curse of Thomas Becket wrought on men from far away. Was there really any foundation for what men then said, that the King thought it better that his foe should be in the country rather than out of it? An apparent reconciliation was brought about, which, however, left the main questions undecided, each side only consenting generally to a peace with the other. Becket did not allow himself to be hindered by it, on his return to England, from excommunicating leading ecclesiastics who had supported the King's party. But at this Henry's deep-seated wrath awoke. Beset by the exiles with cries for protection, he let the complaint escape him in the presence of his knights, that among so many to whom he had shown favour there was not one who had courage enough to avenge the insults offered to him.[27] As opposed to the Church sympathies which through the clergy wrought on all people, the temporal state was mainly kept together by the reciprocal relations of the feudal lord and sovereign to his vassals and knights, and of them to him: to spiritual reverence was opposed personal devotion. But these feelings, too, as they have their justification, so they have their moral limitations; they are as capable of exaggeration and excess as all others. Enflamed by the King's words which seemed to touch the honour of knighthood, four of his knights hastened to Canterbury, and sought out the man, who dared to bid the King defiance in his own kingdom; as Becket refused to recall the excommunication, they murdered him horribly in the cathedral. When required to obey the King, Becket was wont to reserve the rights of the Church and the priesthood; for this reservation he died.

Henry II by calling forth, intentionally or not, this brutal act of violence in the ecclesiastical strife, drew on himself the catastrophe of his life.

By Becket's murder the ideas of Church independence gained what was yet wanting to them, a martyr: his death was more advantageous to them than his life could ever have been. The belief that the victim wrought miracles, which were ascribed to him in increasing measure, at first slight, then more and more surprising ones, viz. cures of incurable diseases,—who does not know the resistless nature of this illusion, bound up as it is with the nearest needs of man in every form?—made him the idol of England. Henry II had to live to see the man who had refused him the old accustomed obedience, reverenced among his people with almost divine honours as one of the greatest saints that had ever lived. The great Hohenstaufen in the unsuccessful struggle with the Papacy was at last brought to declare that all he had hitherto done rested on an error; and in like manner, but one far more humiliating and painful, Henry II had to do penance, and receive the discipline of the scourge, at the tomb of the man who had been murdered by his loyal subjects. On a hasty glance it seems as though his Constitutions were established, but a more accurate inquiry shows that the articles which displeased the Pope were left out. The hierarchic ideas gained the day in England also.

It was precisely the Church quarrel that fed the discords which broke out in the King's own house. His eldest son found a pretence for his revolt, and essentially promoted it, by alleging that the murderers of the glorious martyr were unpunished; he on his side promised the clergy to make good all existing injuries, since what belonged to the Church should not serve man's ostentation. The example of the elder wrought on the younger sons too, who, to withstand their father, recognised the supremacy of the King of France. Henry's last years were filled with depression, and even with despair; when dying he was believed to have bequeathed his curse to his children. In the cloisters his death was ascribed to the intercession and merits of S. Thomas.

For with the acceptance of the hierarchic ideas the prestige of their martyr grew day by day. In the crusade of 1189 men saw him appear in dreams, and declare that he was appointed to protect the fleet, to calm the storms.

It was under these auspices that the chivalry of the Plantagenet realm took part in the Third Crusade: King Richard (in whom the ideas of Church and Chivalry attained their highest splendour) at their head gave back to the already lost kingdom of Jerusalem, in despite of a very powerful foe, a certain amount of stability: as he served the hierarchic views with all his power, there was no question under him as to any dispute between Church and State. But this power itself could not be increased owing to his absence. Whilst he fought for the Church far away, elements of resistance were stirring in his realm which had been there long ago, and soon after his death came to the most violent outbreak.

John Lackland and Magna Charta.

Despite all the community of interests between the sovereigns of the Conquest and their vassals, grounds of hostility between them had never been altogether wanting. The Conqueror's sons had to make concessions to the great lords, because their succession was not secure; they needed a voluntary recognition, the price of which consisted in a relaxation of the harsh laws with which the monarchy had at first fettered every department of life. But when the great nobles had managed, or decided, contests for the throne, Were they likely to feel bound unconditionally to obey the man whom they had raised? Besides Henry II in his ecclesiastical quarrel needed the consent of his vassals; his court-Assemblies were no longer confined to proclamations of ordinances from the one side only; consultations were held, leading to decisions that concerned them all.

But what is now surprising is the fact, that even the associates in the Conquest, and much more their descendants, claimed the rights which the Anglo-Saxon magnates had once possessed. They, too, appealed incessantly to the Laga, the laws of Edward the Confessor, by which was meant the collection of old legal customs, the observation of which had been promised from the first. Following the precedent of their kings, the families that had risen through the Conquest regarded themselves as the heirs of the fallen Anglo-Saxon chiefs, into whose place they had stepped. The rights of the old Witan and of the vassals of the new feudal state became fused together.

We must now lay greater weight than is commonly done on the incidents that occurred during King Richard's absence. He had entrusted the administration of the realm to a man of low origin, William, bishop of Ely, who carried it on with great energy, and not without the pomp and splendour, which grace authority, but arouse jealousy. Hence lay and spiritual chiefs combined against him: with Earl John, the brother of the absent King, at their head, they banished the hated bishop by the strong hand, and of their own authority set another in his place. The city of London, which had been already allowed the election of its own magistrates by Henry II, had then formed a so-called Communia after the pattern of the Flemish and North French towns; bishops, earls, and barons, swore to support the city in it.[28]

These first attempts at an opposition by the estates obtained fresh weight when on Richard's death a contest again arose about the succession. Earl John claimed it for himself, but Arthur, an elder brother's son, seemed to have a better right, and had been moreover recognised at once in the South French provinces. The English nobles fortified their castles, and for some time assumed an almost threatening position; they only acknowledged John on the assurance that each and all should have their rights.[29] John's possession of the crown was therefore derived not merely from right of inheritance, but also from their election.

A strong territorial confederacy had thus gradually grown up, confronting the royal power with a claim to independent rights; events now happened that roused it into full life.

King John incurred the suspicion of having murdered Arthur, who had fallen into his hands, to rid himself of his claims; he was accused of it by the peers of France, and pronounced guilty; on which the Plantagenet provinces which were fiefs of the French crown went over to the King of France at the first attack. The English nobility would at least not fight for a sovereign on whom such a heinous suspicion lay: on another pretence it abandoned him.

But then broke out a new quarrel with the Church. The most powerful pontiff that ever sat in the Roman See, Innocent III, thought good to decide a disputed election at Canterbury by passing over both candidates, including the King's, and caused the election of, or rather himself named, one of his friends from the great school at Paris, Stephen Langton. As King John did not acknowledge him, Innocent laid England under an Interdict.

Alike careless and cruel, naturally hasty and untrustworthy, of doubtful birthright, and now rejected by the Church, John must have rather expected resistance than support from the great men of the realm. He tried to assure himself of those he suspected by taking hostages from their families; he confiscated the property of the ecclesiastics who complied with the Pope's orders, and took it under his own management; he employed every means which the still unlimited extent of the supreme authority allowed, to obtain money and men; powerfully and successfully he used the sword. But in the long run he could not maintain himself by these means. When a revolt broke out in Wales at the open instigation of the Pope, and the King's vassals were summoned to put it down, even among them a general discontent was perceptible; John had reason to dread that if he came near the enemy with such an army he might be delivered into their hands or killed: he did not venture to carry out the campaign. And meanwhile he saw himself threatened from abroad also. King Philip Augustus of France armed, to attack his old opponent at home (whom he had already driven from in those provinces over which he himself was feudal sovereign), and to carry out the Pope's excommunication against him. He boasted, probably with good grounds, of having the English barons' letters and seals, promising that they would join him. He would have restored all the fugitives and exiles; the Church element would have raised itself all the more strongly, in proportion to its previous depression; a general revolt would have accompanied his attack, the English government according to all appearance would have been lost.

King John knew this well: to avoid immediate ruin he seized on a means of escape which was completely unexpected, but quite decisive—he gave over his kingdom in vassalage to the Pope.

What William I had so expressly rejected was now accepted in a moment of extreme pressure, from which such a step was the only means of escape. The moment the Pope was recognised as feudal lord of England, not only must his hostility cease, but he would be bound to take the realm under his protection. He now forbade the King of France, whom he had before urged on to its conquest, to carry out the invasion, which was already prepared.

It appears as if the barons had originally agreed with the King's proceeding, although they did not entirely approve its form. They maintained that they had risen up for the Church's rights,[30] and saw in the Pope a natural ally. They thought to gain their own purpose all the more surely now that Stephen Langton received the see of Canterbury, a man who, while he represented the Papal authority, at the same time zealously made their interests his own. At the very moment when the archbishop absolved the King from the excommunication, he made him swear that he would restore the good laws, especially those of King Edward, and would do all according to the legal decisions of his courts. It may be regarded as the first time that a Norman-Plantagenet king's administration was acted on by an obligatory engagement, when King John, on the point of taking the field against some barons whom he regarded as rebels, was hindered by the archbishop who reminded him that he would thus be breaking his last oath, which bound him to take judicial proceedings. The tradition that a forgotten charter of Henry I was produced by the archbishop (who was certainly, as his writings show, a scholar of research), and recognised as a legal document which gave them a firm footing, may admit of some doubt; there is no doubt that it was Stephen Langton who gathered around him the great nobles and bound them by a mutual engagement, to defend, even at the risk of life, the old liberties and rights which they derived from Anglo-Saxon times.

It was, in fact, of considerable importance that the primate, on whose co-operation with the King the Norman state originally rested, united himself in this matter as closely as possible with the nobles; among all alike, without regard to their origin, whether from France or from England, had arisen the wish to limit the crown, as it had been limited in the Anglo-Saxon period.

Here, however, they had to discover that the Pope was minded to protect the King, his vassal, not only against attacks from abroad, but also against movements at home. The engagements which the barons had formed, when he released them from their oath of fidelity to the King, he now declared to be invalid and void. The legate in England reported unfavourably on their proceedings, and it was seen that he was intimately allied with the King. The war was still raging on the continent, and the King had been again defeated, at Bouvines, July 27, 1214; he had returned disheartened, but not without bodies of mercenaries, both horse and foot, which excited anxiety in the allied nobles. This feeling was strengthened by the fact that, after the death of a chancellor connected with them by family, and on good terms with them, he raised a foreigner, Peter des Roches, to that dignity, and it was believed that this foreigner would lend a hand to any attempt at restoring the previous state of things. Acts of violence of the old sort, and the King's lusts, which brought dishonour into their families, added to their indignation. In short, the barons, far from breaking up their alliance, confirmed it with new oaths. While they pressed the King to accept the demands which they laid before him, they sent one of the chief of their number, Eustace de Vescy, to Rome, to win the Pope to their cause, by reminding him of the gratitude due to them for their services in the cause of the Church. As lord of England, for they did not hesitate to designate him as such, he might admonish King John, and, if necessary, force him to restore unimpaired the old rights guaranteed them by the charters of earlier Kings.[31]

But not so did Innocent understand his right of supreme lordship in England; he did not side with those who had helped to win the victory for him over the King, but with the King himself, to whose sudden decision he owed its fruits—the acknowledgment of his feudal superiority. He blamed the archbishop for concealing the movements of the barons from him, and for having, perhaps, even encouraged them, though knowing their pernicious nature: with what view was he stirring questions of which no mention had been made either under the King's father or brother? He censured the barons for refusing the scutage, which had been paid from old times, and for their threat of proceeding sword in hand. He repeated his command to them to break up their confederacy, under threat of excommunication.

As one step lower the primate and nobles, so in the highest sphere Innocent and John were in alliance. The Papacy, then in possession of supremacy over the world, made common cause with royalty. Would not the nobles, some from reverence for the supreme Pontiff's authority, others from a sense of religious obligation, yield to this alliance? Such was not their intention.[32]

The King proffered the barons an arbitration, the umpire to be the Pope, or else an absolute reference of the whole matter to him, who then by his apostolic power could settle what was right and lawful. They could not possibly accept either the one or the other, after the known declarations of the Pope. As they persevered in their hostile attitude, the King called on the archbishop to carry out the instructions of a Papal brief, and pronounce the barons excommunicated. Stephen Langton answered that he knew better what was the true intention of the holy father. The Pope's name this time remained quite powerless. Rather it was preached in London that the highest spiritual power should not encroach on temporal affairs; Peter, in the significant phrase of the time, could not be Constantine as well.[33] Only among the lower citizens was there a party favourable to the King, but they were put down at a blow by the great barons and the rich citizens. The capital threw its whole weight on the side of the barons. They rose in arms and formally renounced their allegiance to the King; they proclaimed war against him under the name of 'the army of God.' Thus confronted by the whole kingdom, in which there appeared to be only one opinion, the King had no means of resistance remaining, no choice left.

He came down—15th June, 1215—from Windsor to the meadow at Runnymede, where the barons lay encamped, and signed the articles laid before him, happy enough in getting some of them softened. The Great Charter came into being, truly the 'Magna Charta,' which throws not merely all earlier, but also the later charters into the shade.

It is a document which, more than any other, links together the different epochs of English history. With a renewal of the earliest maxims of German personal freedom it combines a settlement of the rights of the feudal Estates: on this twofold basis has the proud edifice of the English constitution been erected. Before all things the lay nobles sought to secure themselves against the misuse of the King's authority in his feudal capacity, and as bound up with the supreme jurisdiction; but the rights of the Church and of the towns were also guaranteed. It was especially by forced collections of extraordinary aids that King John had harassed his Estates: since they could no longer put up with this, and yet the crown could not dispense with extraordinary resources, a solution was found by requiring that such aids should not be levied except with the consent of the Great Council, which consisted of the lords spiritual and temporal. They tried to set limits to the arbitrary imprisonments that had been hitherto the order of the day, by definite reference to the law of the land and the verdict of sworn men. But these are just the weightiest points on which personal freedom and security of property rest; and how to combine them with a strong government forms the leading problem for all national constitutions.

Two other points in this document deserve notice. In other countries also at this epoch emperors and kings made very comprehensive concessions to the several Estates: the distinctive point in the case of England is, that they were not made to each Estate separately, but to all at the same time. While elsewhere each Estate was caring for itself, here a common interest of all grew up, which bound them together for ever. Further, the Charter was introduced in conscious opposition to the supreme spiritual power also; the principles which lay at the very root of popular freedom breathed an anti-Romish spirit.

Yet it was far from possible to regard them as being fully established. There were also conditions contained in the Charter, by which the legal and indispensable powers of the King's government were impaired: the barons even formed a controlling power as against the King. It could not be expected that King John, or any of his successors, would let this pass quietly. And besides, was not the Pope able to do away with the obligation of which he disapproved? We still possess the first draft of the Charter, which presents considerable variations from the document in its final form, among others the following. According to the draft the King was to give an assurance that he would never obtain from the Pope a revocation of the arrangements agreed on; the archbishop, the bishops, and the Papal plenipotentiary, Master Pandulph, were to guarantee this assurance. We see to what quarter the anxieties of the nobles pointed, how they wished above all to obtain security against the influences of the Papal See. Yet this they were not able to obtain. There was no mention in the document either of the bishops or of Master Pandulph; the King promised in general, not to obtain such a revocation from any one; they avoided naming the Pope.[34]

In reality it made no difference, whatever might be promised or done in this respect. Innocent III was not the man to accept quietly what had taken place against his declared will, or to yield to accomplished facts. On the authority of the words 'I have set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms,' which seemed to him a sufficient basis for his Paramount Right, he gave sentence rejecting the whole contents of the Charter; he suspended Stephen Langton, excommunicated the barons and the citizens of London, as the true authors of this perverse act, and forbade the King under pain of excommunication to observe the Charter which he had put forth.

And even without this King John had already armed, to annul by force of arms all that he had promised. A war broke out which took a turn especially dangerous to the kingdom, because the barons called the heir of France to the English throne and did him homage. So little were the feelings of nationality yet developed, that the barons fought out the war against their King, supported by the presence and military Power of a foreign prince. For the interests of the English crown it was perhaps an advantage that King John died in the midst of the troubles, and his rights passed to his son Henry, a child to whom his father's iniquity could not be imputed.[35] In his name a royalist party was formed by the joint action of Pembroke, the Marshal of the kingdom and the Papal Legate, which at last won such advantages in the field, that the French prince was induced to surrender his claim, which he himself hardly held to be a good one—the English were designated as traitors by his retinue,—and give back to the barons the homage they had pledged him. But he did so only on the condition that not merely their possessions, but also the lawful customs and liberties of the realm should be secured to them.[36] At a meeting between Henry III and the French prince at Merton in Surrey, it was agreed to give Magna Charta a form, in which it was deemed compatible with the monarchy. In this shape the article on personal freedom occurs; on the other hand everything is left out that could imply a power of control to be exercised against the King; the need of a grant before levying scutage is also no longer mentioned. The barons abandoned for the time their chief claims.

It is, properly speaking, this charter which was renewed in the ninth year of Henry III as Magna Charta, and was afterwards repeatedly confirmed. As we see, it did not include the right of approving taxes by a vote.

Whether men's union in a State in general depends on an original contract, is a question for political theorists, and to them we leave its solution. On the other hand, however, it might well be maintained that the English constitution, as it gradually shaped itself, assumed the character of a contract. So much is already involved in the first promises which William the Conqueror made at his entry into London and in his agreement with the partisans of Harold. The same is true of the assurances given by his sons, especially the second one: they were the price of a very definite equivalent. More than any that had gone before however does Magna Charta bear this character. The barons put forward their demands: King John negociates about them, and at last sees himself forced to accept them. It is true that he soon takes arms to free himself from the obligation he has undertaken. It comes to a struggle, in which, however, neither side decidedly gains the upper hand, and they agree to a compromise. It is true the barons did not expressly stipulate for the new charter when they submitted to John's son (for with John himself they could certainly have never been reconciled), but yet it is undeniable that without it their submission would never have taken place, nor would peace have been concluded.

As, however, is generally the case, the agreement had in it the germs of a further quarrel. The one side did not forget what it had lost, the other what it had aimed at and failed to attain. Magna Charta does not contain a final settlement, by which the sovereign's claims to obedience were reconciled with the security of the vassals; it is less a contract that has attained to full validity, than the outline of a contract, to fill up which would yet require the struggles of centuries.

NOTES:

[22] He says himself later, 'terror publicae potestatis me intrusit,' in Gervasius, 497.

[23] Canones Concilii Turonensis, Article III, 'ut laici ecclesiastica non usurpent;' and Article I of those previously omitted in Mansi, XXI. 1178 seq.

[24] Concilium Clarendoniae, 8 Cal. Febr. MCLXIV, Article VIII, de appellationibus. 'Si archiepiscopus defuerit in justitia exhibenda, ad dominum regem perveniendum est postremo; ita quod non debeat ultra procedi absque assensu domini regis.' Wilkins, i. 435.

[25] Rogeri de Hoveden Annales ed. Savile, 283. 6. 'Prohibeo vobis ex parte omnipotentis dei et sub anathemate, ne faciatis hodie de me judicium, quia appellavi ad praesentiam domini papae.' None, however, of the accounts we have can be looked on as quite accurate.

[26] 'Ambigua fata formidans.' Knyghton de eventibus Angliae, 2391.

[27] Gervasius 1414 'se ignobiles et ignavos homines nutrivisse, quorum nec unus tot sibi illatas injurias voluerit vindicare.'

[28] 'Episcopi comites et barones regni—juraverunt quod ipsi eam communiam et dignitatem civitatis Londinensis custodirent.'

[29] Hoveden, p. 450, 'quod redderet unicuique illorum ius suum, si ipsi illi fidem servaverint et pacem.'

[30] 'Quod ipsi audacter pro libertate ecclesiae ad mandatum suum se opposuerint,—honores quos ei (Papae) et romanae ecclesiae exhibuistis, id per eos coactus fecistis.'—Mauclerc, literae ad legem, in Rymer, Foedera, i.

[31] Mauclerc, literae de negotio Baronum, in Rymer, Foedera, i. 185: 'Magnates Angliae—instanter domino Papae supplicant, quod cum ipse sit dominus Angliae vos—compellat, antiquas libertates suas—eis illaesas conservare.'

[32] Literae Johannis regis, quibus quae sit baronum contumacia narrat. Apud Odiham, 29 die Maii.

[33] In Matthew Paris: 'Quod non pertinet ad papam ordinatio rerum laicarum.'

[34] Articuli magnae cartae libertatum, Sec. 49. Magna carta regis Johannis. In Blackstone, the Great Charter, 9, 23.

[35] Matthew Paris. 'Nobiles universi et castellani ei multo facilius adhaeserunt, quia propria patris iniquitas filio non debuit imputari.'

[36] Forma pacis inter Henricum et Ludovicum, in Rymer, i. 221. 'Coadiutores sui habeant terras suas—et rectas consuetudines et libertates regni Angliae.'



CHAPTER IV.

FOUNDATION OF THE PARLIAMENTARY CONSTITUTION.

There is a very accurate correspondence in this epoch also between the general history of the Western world and events in England: these last form but a part of the great victory of the hierarchy and its advance in power, which marks the first half of the 13th century. By combining with the vassals the Popes had overcome the monarchy, and had then in turn overcome the vassals by combining with the monarchy and its endangered rights. It must not be regarded as a mere title, an empty word, if the Pope was acknowledged to be feudal Lord of England: his legates, Gualo, Pandulph, Otho, and with them some native prelates, devoted to him (above all that Peter des Roches, who, by his conduct when Bishop of Winchester, through the mistrust awakened, incurred almost the chief responsibility of the earlier troubles), spoke the decisive word in the affairs of the kingdom and crushed their opponents. It was reported that Innocent IV was heard to say, 'Is not the King of England my vassal, my servant? At my nod he will imprison and punish.'[37] Under this influence the best benefices in the kingdom were given away without regard to the freedom of election or the rights of patrons, and in fact mostly to foreigners. The Pope's exchequer drew its richest revenues from England; there was no end to the exactions of its subordinate agents, Master Martin, Master Marin, Peter Rubeo, and all the rest of them. Even the King surrounded himself with foreigners. To his own relations and to the relations of his Provencal wife fell the most profitable places, and the advantages arising from his paramount feudal rights; they too exercised much influence on public affairs, and that in the interests of the Papal power, with which they were allied. Riotous movements occasionally took place against this system, but they were suppressed: men suffered in silence as long as it was only the exercise of rights once acknowledged. But now it happened that the Popes in their war with the last of the Hohenstaufen, whom they had resolved to destroy, proposed to employ the resources of England and in a very different manner than before. They awoke Henry III's dynastic ambition by promoting the elevation of his brother to be King of the Romans, and destining his younger son Edmund for the crown of Naples and Sicily. King Henry pledged himself in return to the heaviest money-payments. It began to appear as if England were no longer a free kingdom, using its resources for its own objects: the land and all its riches was at the service of the Pope at Rome; the King was little more than a tool of the hierarchy.

It was at this crisis that the Parliaments of England, if they did not actually begin, yet first attained to a definite form and efficiency.

The opposition of the country to the ecclesiastico-temporal government became most conspicuous in the year 1257, when Henry, happy beyond measure in his son's being raised to royal rank by the Apostolic See, presented his son to the Great Council of the nation, already wearing the national costume of Naples, and named the sum, to the payment of which he had pledged himself in return. The Estates at once refused their consent to his accepting the crown, which they considered could not be maintained owing to the untrustworthiness of the Italians, and of the Romish See itself, and the distance of the country; the money-pledge excited loud displeasure. Since they were required to redeem it, they reasonably enough gave it to be understood that they ought to have been consulted first. It was precisely the alliance of the Pope and the King that they had long felt most bitterly; they said truly, England would by such a joint action be as it were ground to dust between two millstones. As, however, despite all remonstrances, the demands were persevered with,—for the King had taken on himself the debts incurred by Pope Alexander IV in the Neapolitan war, and the Pope had already referred to England the bankers entrusted with the payments,—a storm of opposition broke out, which led to what was equivalent to an overthrow of the government. The King had to consent to the appointment of a committee for reforming the realm, to be named in equal proportions by himself and by the barons; from this, however, was selected a council of fifteen members, in which the King's opponents had a decisive majority. They put forth Statutes, at Oxford, which virtually stripped the King of his power; he had to swear to them with a lighted taper in his hand. The Pope without hesitation at once condemned these ordinances; King Louis IX of France also, who was called in as arbiter, decided against them: and some moderate men drew back from them: but among the rest the zeal with which they held to them was thus only inflamed to greater violence. They had the King in their power, and felt themselves strong enough to impose their will on him as law.

Without doubt they had the opinion of the country on their side. For the first time since the Conquest the insular spirit of England, which was now shared even by the conquerors themselves, manifested itself in a natural opposition to all foreign influence. The King's half-brothers with their numerous dependents were driven out without mercy, their castles occupied, their places given to the foremost Englishmen. The Papal legate Guido, one of the most distinguished members of the Curia, who himself became Pope at a later time, was forbidden to enter England. Most foreigners, it mattered not of what station or nationality, were forced to quit the realm: it went hard with those who could not speak English. The leader of the barons, Simon de Montfort, was solemnly declared Protector of the kingdom and people; he had in particular the lower clergy, the natural leaders of the masses, on his side. When he was put under the ban of the Church his followers retorted by assuming the badge of the cross, since his cause appeared to them just and holy.[38]

At this very juncture it was that the attempt was made to form a Parliamentary Assembly corresponding to the meaning of that word.

The Statutes or Provisions of Oxford contain the first attempt to effect this, by enacting that thrice every year the newly formed royal Council should meet together with twelve men elected by the Commonalty of England, and consult on the affairs of the kingdom.[39] There is no doubt that these twelve belonged to the nobles and were to represent them: the decisive point lies in the fact that it was not a number of nobles summoned by the King, but a committee of the Estates chosen by themselves that was placed by the side of the Council. The Council and the twelve persons elected formed for some years an association that united the executive and legislative powers.

But this continued only as long as the King acquiesced in it. When he had the courage to resist, it is true that in the first encounter which ensued, he was himself taken prisoner: but his partisans were not crushed by this; and soon after his wife, who had collected about her a considerable body of mercenaries, in concert with the Pope and the King of France, thought herself strong enough to invade England. Simon felt that he needed a greater, in other words, a broader, basis of support. And the design he then conceived has secured him an imperishable memory. He summoned first of all representatives of the knights of the shires, and directly afterwards representatives of the towns and the Cinque Ports, to form a Parliament in conjunction with the nobles of the realm. This was not an altogether new thing in the European world; we know that in the Cortes of Aragon, as early as the 12th century, by the side of the high nobility and the ecclesiastics there appeared also the Hidalgos and the deputies of the Commons; and Simon de Montfort might well be aware of this, since his father had been in so many ways connected with Aragon. In England itself under King John men had come very near it without however carrying it through: not till afterwards did the innovation appear a real necessity. In opposition to the one-sided power exercised by the foreigners, nothing was so much insisted on in daily talk and in the popular ballads as the propriety of calling the natives of the land to counsel, since to them its laws were best known. This justifiable wish met with adequate satisfaction now that the Commons were summoned; the public feeling against the foreigners, on which Simon de Montfort necessarily relied, thus found expression. The assembly which he called together doubtless sympathised with his party views. As he invited only those nobles to it who remained true to him (they were not more than twenty-three in number), so he appears to have summoned those only of the towns which adhered to him unconditionally. But the arrangement involved more than was contemplated from his point of view.

Amid the storms he had called forth Simon de Montfort perished: the King was freed, the royal authority re-established. A new Papal legate entered London in the full splendour of his office, Cardinal Ottoboni; Guido having meanwhile himself obtained the tiara, and using every means to subdue the unbending spirits, from which danger even to the Church was dreaded.[40] Yet the old state of things was not restored: neither the rule of foreigners, nor the absolute dependence on the Papal policy. The later government of Henry III has a different character from the earlier: the legate himself confirmed Magna Charta in the shape finally accepted. It is not merely at the great national festivals that we find representatives of the towns present, whom the King has summoned; it is beyond a doubt that one of the most important statutes of the time was passed with their consent.[41] Yet regulations for the summons of representatives from the towns were as little fixed by law as those for voting the taxes. It would by no means harmonise with the constitution of Romano-German states, that organic institutions should come into full force in mere antagonism to the highest authority. They must coincide with the interests of that authority, as was the case in England under Henry's warlike son Edward I.

Without doubt Edward, who once more revived in the East the reputation of the Plantagenet Kings for personal valour, would have preferred to fight there for the interests of Christendom, he even speaks of it in his will; or else he would have wished to recover from the French crown the lands which his father had inherited, and which had passed into French possession; but neither the one nor the other was possible; another object was assigned to his energy and his ambition, one more befitting an English king: he undertook to unite the whole island under his sceptre.

In Wales, the conquest of which had been so often attempted and so often failed, there lived at this time Prince Llewellyn, whose personal beauty, cunning, and high spirit fitted him to be a brilliant representative of the old British nationality. The bards, reviving the old prophecies, promised him the ancient crown of Brutus; but when he ventured out of the mountains, he was overpowered and fell in a hand-to-hand conflict. The English crown was not to fall to his lot, but Edward transferred the title of Prince of Wales to his own son. The great cross of the Welsh, the crown of Arthur, fell into his hands: he no longer tolerated the bards: their age passed away with the Crusades.

From Wales Edward turned his arms against Scotland. There Columban had in former days anointed as king a Scottish prince, who was also of Keltic descent; how the German element nevertheless got the upper hand not merely in the greatest part of the country, but also in the ruling family, is the great problem of early Scottish history: a thoroughly Germanic monarchy had arisen, but one which after it had once given a home to the Anglo-Saxons who fled before the Normans, thought its honour concerned in repelling all English influences. A disputed succession gave Edward I an opportunity of reviving the claims of his predecessors to the overlordship of Scotland: he gave the Scotch a king, whom the Scotch rejected simply because he was the English King's nominee. The war, which sometimes seemed ended—there were times at which Edward could regard himself as the Lord of all Albion,—ever blazed out again; above all, the support the Scotch received from the King of France brought about complications which filled all Western Europe with trouble and war; but it was in the home politics of England that their effect was destined to be greatest.

Compelled to make incessant efforts, which exhausted the resources of the crown, Edward appealed to the voluntary assistance of his subjects. He laid down to them the principle, that their common perils should be met with their united strength, that what concerns all must also be borne by all. In the war against Wales he had gathered together the representatives of the counties and the towns, to hear his demands and to act accordingly; chiefly to vote him subsidies. After the victory he had called an assembly of nobles, knights, and towns, to take counsel with them about the treatment of the captives and the country. Similarly he drew together the representatives of the towns in order to decide the affairs of Scotland. With especial emphasis did he call for their united help against Philip the Fair of France, who thought to destroy the English tongue from off the earth: knights and towns were pledged to help in carrying out the resolutions thus adopted by common consent.

In spite of all this appealing to free participation in public matters, Edward I did not refrain from the arbitrary imposition of taxes, and those the most oppressive: the eighth, even the fifth part of men's income. For the campaign in Flanders he summoned the under-tenants as well as the tenants in chief. We find instances of arbitrary seizure of whatever was necessary for the war.

King Edward excused this by his maxim that the interests of the land must be defended with the resources of the land,[42] but we can conceive how, on the boundary line between two different systems, acts of violence, which combined the arbitrariness of the one with the principles of the other, caused a general agitation. In the year 1297 the spiritual lords under their archbishop, as well as the temporal ones (who denied the obligation to serve beyond the sea) under the Constable and Marshal, set themselves energetically to oppose the King. The people, which had the most to suffer from the arbitrary exactions, took their side with cordial approval. They set forth all the grievances of the country, and insisted on their immediate and final redress.

To avoid the pressure, the King had already quitted England, to carry on his campaign in Flanders: the demand was laid before the Councillors whom he had left behind as assessors to his son, who was named Regent. They however were in great perplexity, partly from the trouble of this agitation itself, but mainly from the revolt in Scotland which had broken out in a formidable manner. William Walays, like one of those Heyduck chiefs who rise in Turkey against the established order of things, the right of which they do not recognise, had come down from the hill country, at the head of the fugitives and exiles, a robber-patriot, of gigantic bodily strength and innate talent for war. His successes soon increased his band to the size of an army; he beat the English in a pitched battle, and then swept over the borders into the English territory. If the royal commissioners would oppose a strong resistance to this inroad, they must needs ratify a provisional concession of the demands brought forward. The King, who had meanwhile reached Flanders, which the French had entered from two sides, could not possibly yield to the Scottish movement—whether he wished to carry on the war or make a truce: nothing therefore remained to him but to confirm the concessions made by his councillors.

It is not absolutely certain how far these had gone; one word of discussion may be allowed on the matter.

The historians of the time have maintained that the right of voting the taxes was granted to the Estates, and in fact conjointly to the nobles whether spiritual or temporal, and the representatives of the counties and towns: the copy of a statute is extant, in which this is very expressly stated.[43] But since the statute does not exist in an authentic shape, and is not to be found in the Rolls of the Realm, we cannot safely base any conclusion on it. As to the date too at which it may have been passed, our statements waver between the twenty-eighth and the thirty-fourth year of Edward. On the other hand we find in the collection of charters an undoubted charter of confirmation given at Ghent and dated 5 November 1297, in which not merely are the Great Charter of Henry III and the Forest Charter confirmed, but also some new arrangements of much importance guaranteed, and confirmed by ecclesiastico-judicial regulations.[44] According to it the grants of taxes and contributions which had been hitherto made to the King for his wars were not to be regarded as binding for the future. He reserves only the old customary taxes: to the higher clergy, the nobility, and the commons of the land the assurance is given, that under no circumstances, however pressing, should any tax or contribution or requisition—not even the export duty on wool—be levied except by their common consent and for the interests of all.[45] In the Latin text all sounds more open and less reserved: but even the words of the authentic document include a very essential limitation of the prerogative of the crown, which hitherto had alone exercised the right of estimating what the state needed and of fixing the payments by this standard. The King was averse at heart to the limitation even in this form. When he came back from Flanders after concluding a truce with France, and army and people were met together at York, to carry out a great campaign against Scotland, he was pressed to confirm on English soil the concessions which he had granted on foreign ground.[46] He held it advisable that the campaign should be first carried through; four of his confidential friends swore in his stead (since an oath in person was thought unbecoming to the King), that, the campaign ended, the confirmation should not be wanting. The enterprise was most successful, it led to a great victory over the Scots, and it was the leaders of the English aristocracy who did the best service there; nevertheless, when they met together next Lent (1299) in London, the King strove to avoid an absolute promise: he wished to expressly reserve the undefined 'rights of the crown.' But this delay aroused a general storm: and as he was quite convinced that he could not, under this condition, reckon on further support in the war which still continued, he at last submitted to what was unavoidable, and allowed his clause to drop.[47]

I do not know whether I am mistaken in ascribing to these concessions a different character from that of the earlier ones. It was not a sovereign defeated and reduced to the deepest humiliation who made them, nor did the barons obtain articles which aimed at securing their own direct supremacy: the concessions were the result of the war, which could not be carried on with the existing means. When Edward I laid stress on the necessity of greater common efforts, the counter-demand which was made on him, and to which he yielded, merely implied that a common resolution should be previously come to. His concessions included a return for service already done, and a condition for future service. It did not abase the royal authority; it brought into clear view the unity of interests between the crown and the nation.

Another great crisis united them for the second time. As Edward led the forces of England year by year across the Tweed, to compel the Scots to acknowledge his overlordship by the edge of the sword, the Pope who assumed himself to be the Suzerain of the kingdoms of the world, Boniface VIII, met him with the assertion that Scotland belonged to the Church of Rome, the King therefore was violating the rights of that Church by his invasions. To confront the Pope, King Edward thought it best, as did Philip the Fair of France about the same time, to call in his Estates to his aid, since without them no answer to the claim was possible. The Estates then in a long letter not merely maintain the right of the English crown, but also reject the Pope's claim to decide respecting it as arbiter, as incompatible with the royal dignity: even if the King wished it, yet they would never lend a hand to anything so unseemly and so unheard of.[48] The King, without regard to the Pope, continued his campaigns against Scotland with unabated energy.

It marks the character of Edward I that he nevertheless did not break with the Papacy on this account; so too he still raised taxes that had not been voted, and held Parliaments in the old form: when representatives of the counties and towns were summoned it is not always clear whether they were elected or named.[49] Edward I could not free himself from the habits of arbitrary rule and the old ideas connected with them. But with all this it is still undeniable that under him the monarchy took a far more national position than before; it no longer stood in a hostile attitude as against the community of the land, but belonged to it.

And his successors soon saw themselves forced to complete still further the foundations of a new state of things, which had been thus laid.

Under Edward II the old ambition of the barons to take a preponderant part in the government reappeared once more with the greatest violence. The occasion was afforded by the weakness of this sovereign, who allowed his favourite, the Gascon Gaveston, a disastrous influence on affairs. Discontented with this, the King's nearest cousin, Thomas of Lancaster, placed himself at the head of the great nobles, as indeed he was believed to have sworn to his father in law (whose rich possessions passed to him, and who feared a return of the foreign influences), that he would adhere to the interest of the barons, which was also that of the country. In the fourth year of his government Edward was obliged to accept all the regulations made by a Committee of the Nobles called the 'Ordainers.'

Without advice of the nobles he was forbidden either to begin a war, or to fill up high offices of State, or even to leave the country: the officers of the crown were to be responsible to them. Gaveston had to pay for his short possession of influence by death without mercy.

It was long before the King found men who had the courage to defend the lawful authority of the crown. At last the two Hugh Despencers undertook it: under their leadership the barons were defeated, and Thomas of Lancaster in his turn paid for his enterprises with his life. For in England, if anywhere, the assumption of power led inevitably to the scaffold.

It is hardly needful to say that the regulations of the Ordainers were now revoked. But must not some means be also thought of, to prevent similar acts of violence for the future? It was deemed necessary to declare even the form, under cover of which they had been ratified, invalid for all time. And so an enactment was now made, in which the first definite idea of the Parliamentary Monarchy becomes visible. It was declared that never for the future should any ordinance affecting the King's power and proceeding from his subjects be valid, but only that should be law which was discussed, agreed on, and enacted in Parliament by the King with the consent of the prelates, the earls and barons, and the commonalty of the realm.[50] For it was above all things necessary to withdraw the legislative authority for ever from the turbulent grandees. The monarchy opposed to them its alliance with the commonalty of the realm, as it was expressed by the representatives of the knights and the commons. Among the founders of the English constitution these Hugh Despencers, through whom the legislative power was first transferred to the united body of King Lords and Commons, take a very important position.

This thought was however rather one left for the future to carry out, than one which swayed or contented the English world at the time. Edward II fell before a new attack of the revolted barons, with whom even his wife was allied: he had to think it a piece of good fortune that, on the ground of his own abdication, his son was acknowledged as his successor. The latter however could only obtain real possession of the royal power by overthrowing the faction to which his father had succumbed. While he restored the memory of the two Despencers, who had been condemned and executed by the barons, he also decided to carry on a Parliamentary government; it is the first that existed in England.

For the general course of the development it is significant that the rights of Parliament in relation to the voting of taxes, and now also to legislation as a whole, were acknowledged before an appropriate form was found for its consultations. In the first years of Edward III its four constituent parts, prelates, barons, knights, and town deputies, held their debates in four different assemblies; but gradually the two first were fused into an Upper, the two last into a Second House, without any definite law being laid down to that effect: the nature of things led to the custom, the custom in course of time became law.

That which had been already preparing under the first Edward came under the third for the first time into complete operation, viz. the participation of the Estates in the management of foreign affairs and of war.

In the year 1333 the Parliament advised the King to break the peace with Scotland, which the barons had concluded of their own authority according to their own views, not to put up with any more outrages, and not merely to take back the lost border-fortress of Berwick, but to force the Scots to acknowledge the supremacy of England.

In the year 1337 and afterwards the Parliament more than once approved the King's plan of asserting the claim he had through his mother on the French throne by force of arms and through alliances with foreign princes,[51] and promised to support him in it with their lives and properties; it was all the more ready for this, as France had been repeatedly threatening England with a new Conquest. In the year 1344 the Peers, each in his own name, called on the King to cross the sea and not let himself be hindered by any one, not even by the Pope, from appealing to the judgment of God by battle. The clergy imposed on themselves a three-years' tenth, the counties a fifteenth, the towns two tenths; the great nobles followed him in person with their squires and horsemen, without even alluding to their old remonstrances. So that splendid army made its appearance in France, in which the weapons of the yeomen vied with those of the knights, and which, thanks chiefly to the former, won the victory of Cressy. Whilst the King made conquests over the French, his heroic Queen repelled the Scotch. In these wars the now united nation, which put forth all its strength, came for the first time to the feeling of its power, to a position of its own in the world and to the consciousness of it. The King of Scotland at that time, and the King of France some years later, became prisoners in England.

A period followed in which England seemed to have obtained the supremacy in Western Europe. The Scots purchased their King's freedom by a truce which bound them to long and heavy payments, for which hostages were given as a security. A peace was made with the French by which Guienne, Gascony, Poitou, and such important towns as Rochelle and Calais were surrendered to the English. The Prince of Wales, who took up his residence at Bordeaux, mixed in the Spanish quarrels with the view of uniting Biscay to his territories in South France. As the result of these circumstances and of the well-calculated encouragement of Edward III, we find that English commerce prospered immensely and, in emulous alliance with that of Flanders, began to form another great centre for the general commerce of the world. It was still chiefly in the hands of foreigners, but the English made great profits by it. Their riches gained them almost as much prestige in the world as their bravery.[52] The more money-resources the towns possessed, and the more they could and did support the King, the greater became their influence on the affairs of the realm. No language could be more humble than that of these 'poor and simple Commons,' when they address themselves to 'their glorious and thrice gracious King and lord.'[53] But for all that their representations are exceedingly comprehensive and pressing; their grants are not to take effect, unless their grievances are redressed; they never leave out of sight the interests of their staple; they assail the exactions of the officials or the clergy with great zeal. The regard paid to them gives the whole government a popular character.

On an attempt of the King to exercise the legislative power in his great council, they remonstrated; they had no objection to the ordinances themselves, but insisted that valid statutes could only proceed from the lawfully assembled Parliament.

Now too the relations to the Papal See came again into consideration. Seated at Avignon under the influence of the French crown, the Popes were natural opponents of Edward III's claims and enterprises; they sometimes thought of directing the censures of the Church against him. On the other hand, the complaints in England against the encroachments and pecuniary demands of the Curia were louder than ever, without however coming to a rupture on these points. But at last Urban V renewed the old claim to the vassalage of England; he demanded the feudal tribute first paid by King John, and threatened King and kingdom, in case they were not willing to pay it, with judicial proceedings.[54] We know the earlier kings had seen in the connexion with Rome a last resource against the demands of the Estates: on the King's side it required some resolution to renounce it. But the very nature of the Parliamentary government, as Edward III had settled it, involved a disregard of these considerations for the future. It was before the Parliament itself that he laid the Papal demands for their consent and counsel. The Estates consulted separately: first the spiritual and lay lords framed their resolution, then the town deputies assented to it. The answer they gave the Pope was that King John's submission was destitute of all validity, since it was against his coronation-oath, and was made without the consent of the Estates; should the Pope try to enforce satisfaction of his demand by legal process or in any other manner, they would all—dukes earls barons and commons—oppose him with their united force.[55] The clergy only assented to the declaration of invalidity; to threaten the holy father with their resistance, they considered unbecoming. But the declaration of the lay Estates was in itself sufficient for the purpose: the claim was never afterwards raised again.

The Estates had often been obliged to contend against the King and the Roman See at the same time; now the King was allied with them against the Papacy. Now that the Parliamentary constitution was established in its first stage, it is clear how much the union of the Crown and the Estates in opposition to external influence had contributed to it. It was destined however shortly to undergo yet other tests.

NOTES:

[37] Matthew Paris, Historia Major ann. 1253, p. 750.

[38] In Henr. Knyghton, 2445. According to Matthew Paris they swore, not to let themselves be held back by anything—'quin regnum, in quo sunt nati homines geniales et eorum progenitores, ab ingenerosis et alienigenis emundarent.'

[39] 'Les XXIV ont ordene, ke treis parlemens seient par an,—a ces treis parlemens vendrunt les cunseillers le rei eslus,—ke le commun eslise 12 prodes hommes ke vendrunt as parlemens—pur treter de besoigne le rei et del reaume.' On the explanation of this passage, the 'Report on the dignity of a peer' 102 contains matter wellweighed on all sides.

[40] Letter of Clement IV to Louis IX, in Rainaldus, 1265, p. 167. 'Quid putas—per talia machinamenta quaeri? Nisi ut de regno illo regium nomen aboleatur omnino: nisi ut Christianus populus a devotione matris ecclesiae et observantia fidei orthodoxae avertatur.'

[41] 'Convocatis discretioribus regni tam ex majoribus quam minoribus.' Statute of Marleberge, 1267.

[42] 'Nostrae voluntatis fuit ut de bonis terrae ipsa terra conservaretur.' In Knyghton, ii, 2501.

[43] Statutum de tallagio non concedendo, or Nova additio cartarum; in Hemingburgh, articuli inserti in magna charta.

[44] 'Carta confirmationis regis Edwardi I,' in the collection of charters prefixed to the collection of the Statutes in the 'Statutes of the Realm,' p. 37.

[45] 'Avuns graunte—as Arceevesques etc. e as Countes—e a toute la communaute de la terre que mes pur nule busoigne tieu manere des aydes mises ne prises de nre Roiaume ne prendrums fors ke par commun assent de tout le Roiaume e a commun profist de meismes le Roiaume, sauve les auncienes aydes e prises due e acoustumees.' The Articulus insertus in Magna Charta, according to the other statements, runs, 'nullum Tallagium vel auxilium imponatur seu levetur sine voluntate atque assensu communi Archiepiscoporum Episcoporum et aliorum liberorum hominum in regno nostro.'

[46] Hemingburgh: eo quod confirmaverat eas in terra aliena.

[47] Matthew of Westminster, 433. 'Procrastinatis quampluribus diebus demum videns rex quod non desisterent ab inceptis nec adquiescerent sibi in necessitatibus suis, respondit se esse paratum concedere et ratificare petita.'

[48] At Lincoln, 21 Feb. 1301. In Rymer, Rainaldus, Spondanus.

[49] Report 183; Hallam, Additional Notes 332.

[50] Revocatio novarum ordinationum, 1323, 29 May, Statutes of the Realm I. 189, 'les choses, qui serount a establir—soient tretees accordees et establies en parlaments par notre Sr. le Roi et par lassent des Prelats Countes et Barouns et la communalte du roialme.'

[51] Speech of W. Shareshall 1351, Parliamentary History (1762) i. 295.

[52] We know the letter of the Duke of Guelders, in which he praised equally 'lanae commoda,—divitias in comparatione ad alios reges centuplas,' and the 'probitas militaris, arcuum asperitas,' in Twysden ii. 2739.

[53] Report 324.

[54] 'Est en volunte de faire proces devers le roy et son roialme pur le dit service et cens recoverir.'

[55] 'Qu'ils resisteront et contre esteront ove toute leur puissance.' Edw Coke first published the document, Institutes iv. 13. In Urban V's letter to Edward in Rainaldus 1365, 13, the demand is not so clearly expressed, but mention is made in it of the Nuncio's overtures; it is to these that the resolution of the Parliament referred.



CHAPTER V.

DEPOSITION OF RICHARD II. THE HOUSE OF LANCASTER.

England did not long maintain herself in the dominant position she then occupied; the plan of extending her rule into Spain proved ruinous to the Prince of Wales. Not merely was his protege overpowered by the French 'Free Companies,' which had gathered round his opponent: a Castilian war-fleet succeeded in destroying the English one in sight of the harbour of Rochelle. On this, their natural inclination towards the King of France awoke in the nobles and towns of South France; without great battles, merely by the revolt of vassals tired of his rule, Edward III again lost all the territories conquered with such great glory, except a few coast towns. Then a gloom settled down around the aged conqueror. He saw his eldest son, who, though obliged to quit France, in England enjoyed the fullest confidence and had every prospect of a great future, sicken away and die. And he too experienced, what befalls so many others, that misfortune abroad raised him up opponents at home. In the increasing weakness of old age, which gave rise to many well-grounded grievances, he could not maintain the independence of the royal power, with the re-establishment of which he had begun his reign. He was forced to receive into his Council men whom he did not like. He was still able to effect thus much, that the succession to the kingdom came to the son of the Prince of Wales, Richard II. But would he, a boy of eleven, be able to take the helm of the proud ship? Men saw factions arise that grouped themselves round the King's uncles, who were not fully disposed to defend his authority.

The great question for English history now was, whether the Parliamentary constitution, whilst it limited the King's prerogative, would also give him security. For the Commons had been at last admitted into the King's Council chiefly in order that they might withstand the violence of the factions. The situation however was not without its complications, for with the political movement one of yet wider aim was connected.

When the kingdom was at the very height of its power there arose in a college at Oxford the man who began that contest against the Papal supremacy which has never since ceased. John Wiclif attached himself first of all to the political movements of his time. One of his earliest writings was directed against the feudal supremacy of the Popes over England. He supported the Parliament's complaints of Romish Provisions and exactions of money, with great learning and at great length. Had his activity confined itself to these subjects, he would be hardly more remembered than perhaps Marsilius of Padua. What gave him quite a special significance was the fact that he brought into clear view the contradiction between the ruling form of the Church and the original documents of the Faith. From the claim of the Popes to be Christ's representatives, he drew the conclusion that they ought also to observe the Gospel which comes from the God-Man, follow His example, and give up their worldly power.[56] The leading Church dogma, that most closely connected with the hierarchic system, the dogma of Transubstantiation, he attacked as being one which equally contradicted Scripture and Reason. He urges his proofs with the acuteness of a skilful Schoolman, but throughout he shows a deep inner religious feeling. We may distinguish in him two separate tendencies. His appeal to Scripture, his attempt to make it accessible to the people, his treatment of dogmatic and religious questions which he will allow to be decided only by Revelation,—all this makes him an evangelic man, one of the chief forerunners of the German Reformation. But, as he himself felt, his strength lay rather in destruction than in construction. In asserting the doctrine that the title to office depends for its validity on personal worth, that even the rule of temporal lords rests on the favour in which they stand with God, and in raising subjects to be the judges over their oppressive masters, he entered on a path like that which the Taborites and the leaders of the peasants in Germany afterwards took.[57]

And these were precisely the doctrines for which his scholars, who traversed the land to make them known, found a well prepared soil in the people of England. How could the rise of popular elements fail to call forth a kindred effort also among the lower classes? The belief arose that Nature intended all men to be equal. The country people spoke of their primitive rights, traces of which were found in the memorials of the Conqueror's times, and which had then been taken from them. When now, instead of seeing these respected, they were subjected to new impositions, and this with harshness and insolence, they rose in open revolt. So overpowering was the attack which they directed against the capital and the King's palace, that Richard II found himself forced to grant them a charter which secured them personal freedom. Had they contented themselves with this, they might have done best for themselves and perhaps for the crown, but when they demanded yet further and more extreme concessions, they roused against themselves the whole power of the organised State, for which they were as yet no match. The Mayor of London himself struck down with his dagger the leader of the bands, Wat Tyler, because he seemed to threaten the King; the Bishop of Norwich was not hindered by his spiritual character from levelling his lance against the insurgents;[58] after which he accompanied the leaders, who were taken and condemned to death, to the scaffold, with words of comfort; in other places the lay nobles did their best. When therefore in the next Parliament the King brought forward the proposal to declare the serfs free by a united resolution,—for the previous charter that had been wrung from him was considered invalid,—both Lords and Commons rejected it, as tending to disinherit them and prove pernicious to the kingdom.

It is not to be supposed that a movement like this, which the lower class of citizens in the towns had joined, just as in the German peasant war, and which was mainly directed against the landed gentry, could be stifled by one defeat: it continued to ferment uninterruptedly in men's hearts.

Still less did the condemnation passed by Convocation on the deviations from the teaching of the Church effect their suppression. On the basis of Wiclif's doctrines grew up the sect of the Lollards, which condemned the worship of images, pilgrimages, and other external church ceremonies, designated the union of judicial authority with spiritual office as unnatural—'hermaphroditism'—rejected excommunication with abhorrence, and made secret and systematic war against the whole Church establishment.

But further besides these feuds there was one within the State system itself which now became most conspicuous.

In the midst of the general ferment how necessary had a strong and resolute hand become! But Richard's government had shown itself somewhat weak; by many it was suspected of having meant to turn the disturbances to its own advantage. The commons, who mainly represented the lower gentry and the upper citizens, abandoned him, and attached themselves to the nobles, just as these revived their old jealousy against the crown. For the almost inevitable result of success in suppressing a popular agitation is to heighten the self-confidence of an aristocracy. Impatient at being excluded from all share in the government, and strengthened in his ambition by the military disasters of the last years, the youngest of Richard's uncles, Thomas of Gloucester, put himself at the head of the grandees, whose plans the commons, instead of opposing, now on the contrary adopted as their own. The great questions arose, which have so often since then convulsed the European world, as to the relation of a Parliamentary assembly to the Monarchy, and their respective rights.

The first demand of the English Parliament was that the ministers of State should be named by it, or at least should be responsible to it. Much as this demand itself implies, yet even more extensive views were behind. The Peers told the King plainly that if he would not rule according to the common law and with their advice, it was competent for them to depose him, with consent of the people, and to raise another of the royal house to the throne;[59] they threatened him openly with the fate of Edward II.

Richard could do nothing but submit. Eleven lords were appointed to restore order in the country; Richard had to swear to carry out all they should ordain (November 1386). There remained but one way by which to oppose this open violence: the King collected the chief judges at Nottingham, and laid the question before them, whether the Commission now forced upon him did not contravene the royal power and his prerogative. The judges were far from so interpreting the Constitution of England as to allow that the King is unconditionally bound by the commands of Parliament. They affirmed under their hand and seal that the appointment of that Commission against the King's will contravened his legal prerogative; those by whom he had been forced to accept it, and who had revived the recollection of the statute against Edward II, they declared to be guilty of high treason. But Parliament itself saw in this sentence not a judgment but an intolerable outrage. At its next sitting it summoned the judges before its tribunal, and in its turn declared them to be themselves guilty of high treason. Chief Justice Tresilian died a shameful death at Tyburn. The King lived to find yet harsher laws laid upon him: his uncle Gloucester was more powerful than he was himself.

He was not however disposed to bear this yoke for ever. He first freed himself from the war with France, which tied his hands; by his marriage with Charles VI's young daughter he sought to win that king over as an ally on his own side; at home too he gained himself friends; when all was prepared, he struck a sudden blow (July 1397), which no one would have expected from him. He removed his leading opponents (above all his uncle Gloucester, and Arundel Archbishop of Canterbury), banished them or threw them into prison: then he succeeded in getting together a Parliament in which his partisans had the upper hand. It moreover completely adopted the ideas of the judges as to the Constitution; it revoked the statutes which had been forced on the King,[60] and gave effect to the sentence of Nottingham. By making the King a very considerable grant for his lifetime, it freed him from the necessity of summoning it anew; he rose at once to a high pitch of self-confidence: he was believed to have said that the laws of England consisted in his word of mouth.

In England, just as in France at the same epoch, political opinions and parties ebbed and flowed in ceaseless antagonism. Richard's success was only momentary. He too, like so many of his ancestors, had incurred a grievous suspicion; the crime laid to his charge was that his uncle, who died in prison, had been murdered there by his command. Besides his absolute rule was not free from arbitrary acts of many kinds; among the great nobles each trembled for his own safety; the clergy, never on good terms with Richard, were impatient at being deprived of their Primate, who was to them 'the tower in the protecting bulwark of the Church.' In the capital too men were against a rule which seemed to put an end to popular influence; it needed only the return of an exile, the young Henry of Lancaster (whom the King would not allow to take possession of his inheritance by deputy, and who in conformity with the feeling of the time broke his ban to do himself right); all men then deserted the King; the nobles could now think of carrying out the threat which they had once hurled against him.

Richard was compelled to call a Parliament, and at the moment it met to pronounce his own abdication. The Parliament was not contented with accepting this; it wished to put an end to all doubt for the future, and to establish its own right for ever.

A long list of articles was drawn up, from which it was concluded that the King had broken his coronation oath and forfeited his crown; the assembled Estates, when severally and conjointly consulted, held them sufficient to justify them in proceeding to the King's deposition. They named Proctors, two for the clergy, two for the high nobility—one for the earls and dukes, the other for the barons and bannerets, two for the knights and commons—one for the Northern, the other for the Southern counties. They sat as a court of justice before the vacant throne, with the Chief Justice in their midst: then the first spiritual commissioner, the Bishop of S. Asaph, rose, and in the place and name and under the authority of the Estates of the realm announced the sentence of deposition against the late King, and forbade all men to receive any further commands from him. Some opposition was raised; it is said that the Bishop of Carlisle very expressly denied the right of subjects to sit in judgment on their hereditary sovereign;[61] but how could this have had any effect against the Parliament's claim which had been formulated so long?

As the crown was now regarded as vacant, Henry of Lancaster arose,—in the name of God, as he said, whilst he made the sign of the cross on his forehead and breast,—to claim it for himself, in virtue of his birth and the right which accrued to him through God and the help of his friends. It was not properly speaking an election that now took place: the spiritual and lay lords, as well as the other members of the Parliament, were asked what their opinion of his claim was: the answer of all was that the Duke should be their King. When, conducted by the two archbishops, he ascended the vacant throne, he was greeted with the joyous acclaim of those assembled. The Archbishop of Canterbury made a speech full of unction, the drift of which was, that henceforth it would not be a child, such as the late sovereign had been, self-willed and void of understanding, but a Man that would rule over them, in the full maturity of his understanding, and resolved to do not so much his own will as the will of God.[62]