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in one of his wars, before the castle of Chaluz; and when the archer who had shot it was brought into his presence, the king demanded what injury he had done him that he should take away his life? The man replied, that his father and brothers had been slain by Richard's hand, and that he would willingly die to rid the world of one who had caused so much bloodshed. Richard was so struck with this answer, that he commanded the man's life should be spared. He died from the unskilful treatment of his wound, A.D. 1199, having made a will in favour of his brother John, and to the prejudice of his nephew Arthur, the rightful heir to the crown, as the son of John's elder brother Geoffrey.

CHAPTER XII.

JOHN (LACK-LAND).

Born at Woodstock. Buried at Worcester. Reigned 17 years. From A.D. 1199 to A.D. 1216.

Archbishops of Canterbury.

Hubert, A.D. 1192-1205. (Vacancy two years.)

Stephen Langton, A.D. 12071228.

THE odious and despicable character of John was not likely to reconcile his nobles to the irregularity of his title; but they seem to have felt that that defect gave them advantage, in struggling with their sovereign for the privileges of their own order. The cause of Arthur was, therefore, left to such support as it might receive from Philip Augustus, by whose aid it prospered for a time on the continent. At length the youthful prince was taken in battle, and is believed either to have been stabbed by the hand of his uncle, or to have been put to death by his order in the castle of Rouen. Philip well knew how to avail himself of the horror excited by this deed; and succeeded in compelling John to abandon Normandy, which was reunited to the French crown.

A dispute now arose between John and the monks of Canterbury about the election of an archbishop, which led in the first instance to the deep humiliation of the king, but

finally to his concession of the Great Charter of English freedom. The settlement of this dispute was taken by the Pope (Innocent III.) into his own hands, and he appointed Stephen Langton to the vacant see. This archbishop, though he was thus thrust upon the Church of England by an unwarrantable assumption of power on the part of the bishop of a foreign Church (the Pope), yet in the end was a blessing to his country. He was ever one of the foremost in withstanding the tyranny of John in the State, and the aggressions of the Pope on the Church of England. He was also a man of no inconsiderable learning and attainments. Had John resisted his appointment by legal means, he might possibly have been supported by his subjects, who suspected Langton's title, and were not yet aware of his character; but the violent measures which he took only gave advantage to the Pope, who laid the kingdom under an interdict, pronounced the deposition of John, and desired Philip to take possession of England. The king of France prepared an armament to execute this sentence, and Cardinal Pandulf was sent over apparently to support that monarch, but with secret instructions to receive the submission, which John in his abject terror was ready to make. To his lasting shame, in the midst of a vast concourse of people at Dover, he laid his crown at the feet of Pandulf, who kept it five days, and trampled under foot the tribute-money which John paid in token of fealty to the haughty legate. The French king was now ordered to give up his enterprise, but he resolved to persist. His fleet, however, was attacked by the English, and almost wholly destroyed.

By thus declaring himself a vassal of Rome, John secured the protection of the Pope in the contests with his barons, in which his continued perfidy and rapacity involved him. The cause of English freedom, on the other hand, found, as we have said, a champion in the archbishop, whose support of the barons in their struggle against the odious tyrant, drew on him the anger of Pope Innocent, by whom he was after a time suspended, nor was he restored till the following reign.

The barons, having raised a great army, and made themselves masters of London, forced the king to submit to their demands. He met them on Runnamede, between Staines

and Windsor, and the Great Charter of English freedom, called Magna Charta, was sealed at that spot (a.d. 1215). By this charter the rights enjoyed by the prelates and barons in Saxon times were confirmed. Its principal articles were, that no tax should be levied without the consent of the national council, except for the ransom of the king, if taken prisoner, or on the knighthood of his eldest son, or the marriage of his eldest daughter. No freeman was to suffer but by the judgment of his peers. The abuses of the feudal law in the wardship and marriage of heirs under age were to be remedied, and the extortions practised by the royal foresters were to be done away with.

The faithless king at once set himself to recover the independence which he considered himself to have lost by this charter. He retired to the Isle of Wight, until he had raised an army of foreign mercenaries, with which he committed such ravages, that the barons invited over Prince Louis of France, who was connected with the royal house by his marriage with Blanch of Castile, John's niece, and did homage to him at London as their sovereign. The arrogance of this prince, and his partiality to his own countrymen were very favourable to the cause of John; who was beginning to recover his ground, when he lost his treasure and great part of his forces by a flood, as he was crossing the marshes in Lincolnshire. Sickening of a fever, occasioned by grief for this loss, he died at Newark, A.D. 1216, when the kingdom was in a most distracted state, and leaving behind him the memory of one of the weakest and most wicked princes that ever sat on a throne.

It was in this reign that the warriors of the fourth crusade, on their way to the Holy Land, took Constantinople, and established for more than fifty years, from A.D. 1204 to A.D. 1261, a Latin dynasty of the Greek empire in the families of Flanders and Courtenay. A sort of crusade, not one of those properly so called, was also sanctioned about the same time against the Albigenses in the south of France, on the ground of their religious opinions. It may be that those opinions were not free from errors; but they are remarkable as an early protest against the corruptions of practice and doctrine in the Church of Rome, which were now at their height.

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CHAPTER XIII.

HENRY III. (OF WINCHESTER.)

Born at Winchester. Buried in Westminster Abbey. Reigned 56 years. From A.D. 1216 to A.D. 1272.

Archbishops of Canterbury.

Stephen Langton, A.D. 1207—1228. | Edmund, A.D. 1234—1240.

(Vacancy one year.)

Richard, A.D. 1229–1231.

(Vacancy three years.)

(Vacancy five years.)

Boniface, A.D. 1245—1270.
(Vacancy three years.)

HENRY was but nine years old at the time of his father's death; but the Earl of Pembroke, who became regent, was happily a nobleman of high principle and great ability. By his wise measures he revived the loyalty of the English for their lawful sovereign, and succeeded in forcing the prince of France to withdraw from the kingdom.

The death of this earl was a great loss to Henry; who being as weak and fickle as he was haughty and rapacious, was for the most part governed by a succession of favourites. He swore to the observance of the Great Charter at his coronation, but his whole reign was an endeavour to break loose from its restraints.

He was at first attached to Hubert de Burgh, whom he made high justiciary and earl of Kent. This nobleman had been most faithful to Henry's family. His influence over the king became odious to the nobles, and was undermined by Peter de Roches, bishop of Winchester, a far meaner and more worthless favourite, who brought over swarms of Gascons and Poitevins, to the great disgust of the English. Hubert was twice forced to take sanctuary, and most narrowly escaped with his life; but at last he recovered some degree of his former favour, while De Roches was in turn disgraced and sent abroad. The king then attached himself to the relatives of Eleanor of Provence, his queen. His fondness for foreigners, whom he enriched with the plunder of his subjects, was one cause of continual disagreements between him and the barons; and their disgust was heightened by seeing that he suffered the Pope to take

a similar course, in disposing of the Church endowments in favour of aliens. The livings were in the hands of Italians, who drew vast sums from the kingdom: and as Henry upheld the Pope in his various extortions, so the latter was ever ready to absolve the king from his oath to observe the Great Charter, or any other statutes to which he was forced by his barons to swear. The Pope had offered the crown of Sicily to Henry's second son; and this offer was made a plea for draining the kingdom of treasure, which went to enrich the Pope. The same offer was afterwards made to Charles of Anjou, brother of the French king, who led an army to Naples, which seated him on the throne.

Henry was generally supported by his brother Richard, earl of Cornwall, a far abler prince than himself: but on Richard's being chosen king of the Romans, Henry found himself left alone to contend against his barons, who were now headed by Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester. Henry had been extravagantly fond of that nobleman, and given him his own sister in marriage; but the fondness had given place to the most bitter aversion, and Leicester took arms against his sovereign, as well as opposed him in the parliaments, which were held from time to time in hope of obtaining money. On one occasion, when the king entered the hall of parliament, he found the nobles all clad in complete armour, and inquired whether he were their prisoner ? They were satisfied at the time with thus frightening the feeble king; but at a later period he was taken prisoner by Leicester, at the battle of Lewes, (A.D. 1264,) and detained, together with Prince Edward his son, for a considerable period, while the kingdom was governed in his name by twenty-four barons, at whose head was Leicester.

Nothing could be more wretched than the state of England at this time. No man was secure in his life or property; and the country was overrun by bands of robbers, who committed the greatest excesses. The Jews were especial sufferers, not only indeed in England, but throughout Europe, in this reign, and those both before and after it. They were cruelly tortured in order to extort their wealth, and this avarice and oppression were cloaked under a seeming zeal for Christianity. Deeply, however, as England suffered from the extortions and insurrections which

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