harmony, scruple, pursued, and obviously. 2. Show by an illustration how the refusal to obey law leads to loss of liberty. 3. Explain how inward and outward law tend to the same result. 4. Give an illustration of this. JOHN, 1199-1216. Deceased, dead. Compassed, brought about. Assembled, met as one body. Victorious, conquering. Regalia, the crown and other things belonging to the king. HENRY III., 1216-1272. Unscrupulous, careless as to con sequences. Interdict, an order forbidding all religious services. Tyrannize, to exercise might without regard to right. Comparatively, judging one thing by another. Exactions, forced and unfair payments. On the death of Richard, his brother John became king, although his nephew Prince Arthur, the son of his deceased brother Geoffrey, was the direct heir. But the young and simple-hearted boy, of only thirteen summers, was no match for his crafty and unscrupulous uncle. After one or two failures, John at last compassed his death, and shortly after Normandy was lost to the English Crown. Of John himself, little or nothing worthy can be told. He, however, engaged in a fierce quarrel with the pope, who laid the kingdom under an interdict. This sentence created universal alarm among the people; the churches were shut up, and even the dead could not be buried. Not content with this, the pope deposed John, and Philip, the King of France, was about to invade the land, when the king humbled himself before the pope's legate, and gave up his crown to him for five days as a sign of submission. The reign of John stands out prominently in our history, as being the one which saw the Great Charter signed by the king. This act was forced on the sovereign by the united and determined action of the barons and clergy, backed by the people generally, under Archbishop Langton, who assembled in arms at Runnymead, June, 1215. This "Magna Charta" secured to Englishmen those rights which they had enjoyed under their old Saxon kings. It enacted that the king should not tyrannize over the barons, nor the barons over the people; that no free person was to be imprisoned or outlawed, except by the decision of his equals, or by the law of the land; that London and other cities were to have their old liberties and rights; and that justice was not to be sold or refused to any one. It also provided for the regular holding of the Great Council, or Parliament, of the realm. But John paid little regard to his promise; and was soon again at war with the barons, when Philip of France came over and sided with them. As the king's army crossed the Wash, the rising tide carried away his baggage and regalia, and this threw him into a fever, of which he died at Newark, in 1216; leaving his eldest son Henry, who was only nine years old, as his successor to a now uncertain throne. Although Henry III. held the sceptre for the long period of fifty-six years, yet he was too weak and selfindulgent to allow his high position to benefit himself or his people. The energy, however, of the Earl of Pembroke, together with the united voice of the people, soon relieved England of the presence of Louis and his foreign troops. The Great Charter was then carefully recast, and solemnly confirmed by the king in parliaments held at Gloucester and Bristol. But the Earl of Pembroke dying in 1219, the country began to fall a prey to the foreign favourites of the king, and the government passed for a time into the hands of Peter des Roches of Poitou, and Hubert de Burgh. Moreover, Henry's marriage with Eleanor of Poitou so much increased the foreign influence with the king, that the barons, under Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, formed a powerful combination to protect the realm from the exactions of Henry and his foreign courtiers. At a meeting of the Great Council, held at Oxford, in 1258, and afterward known as the Mad Parliament, it was ordered that in future, at all such meetings, in addition to the great barons and prelates of the realm, four knights from each shire should be summoned to assist in their councils and grant the king his supplies of money. The barons now took nearly all the power into their own hands, and finding that the king governed no better, they formed an army, and the Barons' War followed. The king's forces engaged the barons in the battle of Lewes, in Sussex, 1264; Henry was defeated and taken prisoner, and the next year, 1265, Simon de Montfort called a parliament at London, in his own name. At this parliament assembled, not only the great barons and prelates as heretofore, but also a hundred of the higher clergy, two knights from each shire, as well as two "discreet, loyal, and honest men" from each city or borough. In this body we see the elements of our existing system of representation. This wise act of the great baron was nearly his last t; for in the same year the young Earl of Gloucester and other nobles, joined by the king's eldest son, Prince Edward, collected a powerful army and fought against Earl Simon's forces at Evesham, in Worcestershire, 1265. Prince Edward's army was victorious, and Simon de Montfort was killed in the thick of the fight. The remaining years of Henry's reign were comparatively peaceful. The young and active Prince Edward went to Palestine to join in the Crusades still going on against the Saracens, and he was in the East when his father died in November, 1272, having reigned, either really or in name, no less than fifty-six years. EXERCISES.-I. Define,-Universal, deposed, submission, sovereign, decision, summoned, defeated, and successor. 2. Briefly outline the events in the reign of John. 3. Give the main provisions of the Magna Charta. 4. Outline the reign of Henry III. THE GREENWOOD SHRIFT. REV. G. CRABBE. Shrift, confession to a priest. Glade, a grass slope in a wood. Ebbed, flowed out. Anointed, set apart by anointing. Outstretched beneath the leafy shade Three little children round her stood, "O mother!" was the mingled cry, And leave us all alone." My blessed babes!" she tried to say, In a low sobbing moan. And then life struggled hard with death, And peering through the deep wood maze, "Will he not come?" she said. Just then, the parting boughs between, Who led a panting steed. "Mother!" the little maiden cried, "I have not idled in the town, But long went wandering up and down, "They told me here-they told me there- And begged him on my bended knee "I told him how you dying lay, I begged him, for dear Christ, His sake, Mother! he would not stir. K |