The Leading Facts of English History Part 17

197. Battle of Bouvines; Second Meeting of the Barons (1214).

John foolishly set out for the Continent, to fight the French at the same time that the English barons were preparing to bring him to terms. He was defeated in the decisive battle of Bouvines, in the north of France, and returned to England crestfallen (1214), and in no condition to resist demands at home. Late in the autumn the barons met in the abbey church of Bury St. Edmunds, in Suffolk, under their leader, Robert Fitz-Walter, of London. Advancing one by one up the church to the high altar, they solemnly swore that they would oblige John to grant the new charter, or they would declare war against him.

198. The King grants the Charter, 1215.

At Easter (1215) the same barons, attended by two thousand armed knights, met the King at Oxford and made known their demands. John tried to evade giving a direct answer. Seeing that was impossible, and finding that the people of London were on the side of the barons, he yielded and requested them to name the day and place for the ratification of the charter.

"Let the day be the 15th of June, the place Runnymede,"[1] was the reply. In accordance therewith, we read at the foot of the shriveled parchment preserved in the British Museum, "Given under our hand...in the meadow called Runnymede, between Windsor and Staines, on the 15th of June, in the seventeenth year of our reign."

[1] Runnymede: about twenty miles southwest of London, on the south bank of the Thames, in Surrey.

199. Terms and Value of the Charter, 1215; England leads in Const.i.tutional Government.

This memorable doc.u.ment was henceforth known as the Magna Carta,[2] or the Great Charter,--a term used to emphatically distinguish it from all previous and partial charters.

[2] Magna Carta: Carta is the spelling in the medieval Latin of this and the preceding charters. (See the Const.i.tutional Doc.u.ments in the Appendix, p. xxix.)

It stipulated that the following grievances should be redressed: First, those of the Church; secondly, those of the barons and their va.s.sals or tenants; thirdly, those of citizens and tradesmen; fourthly, those of freemen and villeins or serfs (SS113, 150).

Such was the first agreement entered into between the King and all cla.s.ses of his people. Of the sixty-three articles which const.i.tute it, the greater part, owing to the changes of time, are now obsolete; but three possess imperishable value. These provide:

(1) That no free man shall be imprisoned or proceeded against except by his peers,[1] or the law of the land.

(2) That justice shall neither be sold, denied, nor delayed.

(3) That all dues from the people to the King, unless otherwise distinctly specified, shall be imposed only with the conselt of the National Council (S144).

This last provision "converted the power of taxation into the shield of liberty."[2]

[1] Peers (from Latin pares): equals; this clause secures a fair and open trial.

[2] Sir J. Mackintosh's "History of England." This provision was dropped in the next reign (see W. Stubb's "Const.i.tutional History of England"); but after the great civil war of the seventeenth century the principle it laid down was firmly reestablished.

Thus, for the first time, the interests of all cla.s.ses were protected, and for the first time the English people appear in the const.i.tutional history of the country as a united body. So highly was this charter esteemed, that in the course of the next two centuries it was confirmed no less than thirty-seven times; and the very day that Charles II entered London, after the civil wars of the seventeenth century, the House of Commons asked him to confirm it again (1660).

Magna Carta was the first great step in that development of const.i.tutional government in which England has taken the lead.

200. John's Efforts to break the Charter (1215).

But John had no sooner set his hand to this doc.u.ment than he determined to repudiate it. He hired bands of soldiers on the Continent to come to his aid. The charter had been obtained by armed revolt; for this reason the Pope opposed it. He suspended Archbishop Langton (S196), and threatened the barons with excommunication (S167), if they persisted in enforcing the provisions of the charter.

201. The Barons invite Louis of France to aid them (1215).

In their desperation,--for the King's hired foreign soldiers were now ravaging the country,--the barons dispatched a messenger to John's sworn enemy, Philip, King of France. They invited him to send over his son, Prince Louis, to free them from tyranny, and become ruler of the kingdom. He came with all speed, and soon made himself master of the southern counties.

202. King John's Death (1216).

John was the first sovereign who had styled himself, on his great seal, "King of England,"[1] thus formally claiming the actual ownership of the realm. He was now to find that the sovereign who has no place in his subjects' hearts has small hold of their possessions.

[1] The late Professor E. A. Freeman, in his "Norman Conquest," I, 85, note, says that though Richard Coeur de Lion had used this t.i.tle in issuing charters, yet John was the first king who put this inscription on the great seal.

The rest of his ignominious reign was spent in war against the barons and Prince Louis of France. "They have placed twenty-five kings over me!" he shouted, in his fury, referring to the twenty-five leading men who had been appointed to see that the Great Charter did not become a dead letter. But the twenty-five did their duty, and the war was on.

In the midst of it John suddenly died. The old record said of him--and said rightly--that he was "a knight without truth, a king without justice, a Christian without faith."[2] The Church returned good for evil, and permitted him to be buried in front of the high altar of Worcester cathedral.

[2] The late Professor W. Stubbs, of Oxford, says, in his "Early Plantagenets," p. 152: "John ended thus a life of ignominy in which he has no rival in the whole long list of our sovereigns....He was in every way the worst of the whole list: the most vicious, the most profane, the most tyrannical, the most false, the most short-sighted, the most unscrupulous." A more recent writer (Professor Charles Oman, of the University of Oxford), says of John, "No man had a good word to say for him...; he was loathed by every one who knew him."

203. Summary.

John's reign may be regarded as a turning point in English history.

1. Through the loss of Normandy, the Norman n.o.bility found it for their interest to make the welfare of England and of the English race one with their own. Thus the two peoples became more and more united, until finally all differences ceased.

2. In demanding and obtainign the Great Charter, the Church and the n.o.bility made common cause with all cla.s.ses of the people. That doc.u.ment represents the victory of the entire nation. We shall see that the next eighty years will be mainly taken up with the efforts of the nation to hold fast to what it had gained.

Henry III--1216-1272

204. Accession and Character.

John's eldest son, Henry, was crowned at the age of nine. During his long and feeble reign of fifty-six years England's motto might well have been the warning words of Scripture, "Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child!" since a child he remained to the last; for if John's heart was of millstone, Henry's was of wax.

Dante in one of his poems, written perhaps not long after Henry's death, represents him as he sees him in imagination just on the borderland of purgatory. The King is not in suffering, for as he has done no particular good, so he has done no great harm. He appears "as a man of simple life, spending his time singing psalms in a narrow valley."

That shows one side of his negative character; the other was his love of extravagance, vain display, and instability of purpose. Much of the time he drifted about like a ship without compa.s.s or rudder.

205. Reissue of the Great Charter.

Louis, the French prince who had come to England in John's reign as an armed claimant to the throne (S201), finding that both the barons and the Church preferred an English to a foreign king, now retired.

During his minority Henry's guardians twice reissued the Great Charter (S199): first, with the omission of the article which reserved the power of taxation to the National Council (S199, No. 3); and, secondly, with an addition declaring that no man should lose life or limb for hunting in the royal forests (S119).

On the last occasion the Council granted the King in return a fifteenth of their movable or personal property. This tax reached a large cla.s.s of people, like merchants in towns, who were not landholders. On this account it had a decided influence in making them desire to have a voice in the National Council, or Parliament, as it began to be called in this reign (1246). It thus helped, as we shall see later on, to prepare for a very important change in that body.[1]

[1] The first tax on movable or personal property appears to have been levied by Henry II, in 1188, for the support of the Crusades. Under Henry III the idea began to become general that no cla.s.s should be taxed without their consent; out of this grew the representation of townspeople in Parliament.

206. Henry's Extravagance.

When Henry became of age he entered upon a course of extravagant expenditure. This, with unwise and unsuccessful wars, finally piled up debts to the amount of nearly a million of marks, or, in modern money, upwards of 13,000,000 pounds. To satisfy the clamors of his creditors, he mortgaged the Jews (S119), or rather the right of extorting money from them, to his brother Richard.

He also violated the chaters and treaties in order to compel those who benefited from them to purchase their reissue. On the birth of his first son, Prince Edward, he showed himself so eager for congratulatory gifts, that one of the n.o.bles present at court said, "Heaven gave us this child, but the King sells him to us."

207. His Church Building.

Still, not all of the King's extravagance was money thrown away.

Everywhere on the Continent magnificent churches were rising. The heavy and somber Norman architecture, with its round arches and square, ma.s.sive towers, was giving place to the more graceful Gothic style, with its pointed arch and lofty, tapering spire.

The King shared the religious enthusiasm of those who built the grand cathedrals of Salisbury and Lincoln. He himself rebuilt the greater part of Westminster Abbey (S66) as it now stands. A monument so glorious ought to make us willing to overlook some faults in the builder. Yet the expense and taxation incurred in erecting the great minster must be reckoned among the causes that bred discontent and led to civil war (S212).

208. Religious Reformation; the Friars, 1221; Roger Bacon.

While this movement, which covered the land with religious edifices, was in progress, religion itself was undergoing a change. The old monastic orders had grown rich, indolent, and corrupt. The priests had well-nigh ceased to do missionary work. At this period a reform sprang up within the Church itself. On the Continent two new religious orders arose, calling themselves Friars, or Brothers. They first came to England in 1221. These Brothers bound themselves to a life of self-denial and good works. Some labored in the outskirts of towns among the poor and the sick and called them to hear the glad tidings of the teachings of Christ. From their living on charity they came to be known as "Beggin Friars."

Others, like Roger Bacon at Oxford, took an important part in education, and endeavored to rouse the sluggish monks to make efforts in the same direction. Bacon's experiments in physical science, which was then neglected and despiseed, got him the reputation of being a magician. He was driven into exile, imprisoned for many years, and deprived of books and writing materials.