which had disturbed England ever since the days of Rufus. The See of Canterbury having fallen vacant, the monks nominated John de Gray, Bishop of Norwich; the Pope, Innocent III., appointed Stephen Langton. The monks yielded to the Pope; but John, defying the Pontiff, drove them from their abbeys and seized their treasures, because they had deserted his minister and favourite, De Gray.

2. The Pope retaliated by putting England under an Interdict. For six years there was no worship in the land; 1208 the churches were closed; their silent bells rusted in the steeples; the dead were cast without prayer into the earth; the statues of the saints were shrouded in black. The people groaned under the curse; but the King, unmoved, visited Ireland and Wales, exacting homage and imposing

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tribute.

3. The Pope at last called upon Philip of France to dethrone the impious monarch; and then John yielded. Well aware that he could not trust one of the 60,000 warriors who marched under his banner, he took an oath of fealty to the Pope, agreeing to pay to the Roman coffers 1,000 merks as yearly rent for his kingdoms of England and Ireland.

4. Philip, who was at Boulogne ready to invade England, proposed to cross the Strait notwithstanding John's submission to the Pope. Ferrand, Earl of Flanders, objected; and the enraged Monarch ravaged Flanders to the walls of Ghent. The French fleet, however, was scattered by William Longsword,

Earl of Salisbury, who commanded the navy of Eng1214 land. John, in the flush of this success, sailed to Poitou; but his hopes were destroyed by the defeat of his allies, the Emperor Otho and Earl Ferrand, at Bouvines.1 He then obtained a truce for five years.

A.D.

5. A number of men from Anjou and Poitou, who had been allied with King John, sought an asylum in England. Adroit and insinuating, they were received with favour at the Court, and speedily supplanted the old aristocracy in the good graces of the King. He distributed among them all the offices and favours at his disposal. He married them to the rich heiresses

1 Bouvines, 70 miles south-east of Calais.

under his wardship, according to the feudal law, and made them guardians of rich orphans under age. The new courtiers, by their exactions, soon rendered themselves as odious to the English citizens as they were to the nobles of Norman origin; and thus the two races that inhabited England were brought together by a common feeling. Here we may date the birth of a new national spirit, binding all who were born on English soil.

6. That very Stephen Langton, Cardinal, and Archbishop of Canterbury, whose nomination to that see John had opposed, appeared as the chief champion of English freedom in this struggle between people and King. Born in Lincolnshire or Devonshire, he grafted on a stem of English growth the polish and subtlety which could then be acquired only at Paris and at Rome. At a great council, held in St. Paul's in 1213, he laid before the assembled prelates and barons an old charter, granted by Henry I., but swept utterly out of memory by the storms of a changeful century. Here was a base of operations for statesmen who were destined to lay the great foundationstone of the Constitution. On this forgotten fragment the Great Charter was to rise. Meeting in the Abbey of St. Edmundsbury1 on November 20th (the saint's day), the confederate patriots swore solemnly on the high altar that if the King refused their just demands, they would not sheathe the sword until they had wrested from him a charter under his own seal granting what they asked.

7. When, in the first week of January 1215, a stern band entered John's presence and laid their demands before him, his pale lips could hardly ask for time to consider the petition. Easter week being fixed for the giving of a final answer, the base King set himself during the intervening months to throw up what defences he could against the encroachments of his menacing nobles. At the foot of St. Peter's Chair he cast the privilege claimed by his predecessors of electing abbots and bishops, thinking thus to bribe the clergy and the Pope. And he placed himself more securely yet under the Church's wing by sol

1 Bury St. Edmunds is the chief town of West Suffolk, and lies on the river

Larke. The ruins of a magnificent abbey still adorn the town.

emnly swearing that he would lead a crusading army to the Holy Land.

8. Easter week came. The King lay at Oxford. Marching from Stamford to Brackley,1 the barous met Langton and two earls, by whom they sent forward to the King a list of the needed reforms. Langton read the parchment in the hearing of the King. Thereupon John, at whose elbow stood Pandulph the legate, flamed into a furious rage. "And why do they not demand my crown also?" he cried; adding, with a terrible oath, "I will not grant them liberties that will make me a slave."

9. He might have spared his fury; for brave soldiers, steel in hand, were resolved to take what his mean heart could not bear to give. A failure at Northampton did not daunt them. Bedford gates flew open. And word from London told them how its mighty heart throbbed with delight at their resolution. On Sunday the 24th of May, through open gates and silent streets they entered the capital, while the citizens were at church. This awakened John from his dream of folly. He saw but seven knights who lingered by his falling throne. There was not a moment to be lost. A promise must be made, and an oath sworn. So with a smiling face he bade Pembroke go to London, and tell the barons that on a certain day and at a certain place he would grant their full demands.

10. There is by the Thames, not far from Staines,2 a narrow strip of green meadow-land, which bears the name of Runnymede. That little field witnessed, in the thirteenth century,

1 Stamford, lying on the Welland partly in Lincolnshire and partly in Northamptonshire, was one of the "Five Burghs " of the Danes. Brackley, in the south of Northamptonshire, lies near one of the head streams of the Ouse.

2

Staines is a market-town of Middlesex, situated on the left bank of the Thames, about 17 miles from London. (See the Map.)

3 This place is called in the Great Charter Runing mede inter Windlesorum et Staines." By some the phrase

as great a sight as England ever saw. Pouring, with the rising sun, from the gates of Staines, a long cavalcade of barons, headed by Fitzwalter, their general, wound across the field, and halted in the meadow beside the silver Thames. A smaller party, including the King, Pandulph, Pembroke, and the Master June 15, of the English Templars, rode down from Windsor 1215 Castle to the appointed place. And there, with the faintest show of objection, John took pen in hand, and affixed his royal signature to Magna Charta-the Great Char

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KING JOHN SIGNING THE MAGNA CHARTA.

ter of English freedom-his heart belying what his hand had traced. Then riding home to Windsor, he flung himself on the

is said to mean the "meadow of coun- its name from a stream that passed cil;" but it more probably derived through it.

ground, gnashing with his teeth, and cursing the Charter whose ink was scarcely dry.

11. In this famous charter, which has been well summarized as "a solemn protest against the evil of arbitrary arrest and arbitrary taxation," the rights of the clergy and of the barons are laid down with unmistakable distinctness. But its most striking feature lies in its provisions for the mass of the people. Even the villain, who ploughed the fields in coarse leathern dress, was not forgotten. The property of the baron and of the citizen was shielded by an article which said, "No scutage nor aid shall be imposed on the kingdom, except by the Great Council of the realm, unless it be to redeem the King's body, to make his eldest son a knight, and once to marry his eldest daughter; and that to be a reasonable aid: and in like manner shall it be concerning the Tallage and Aids of the city of London, and of other cities which from this time shall have their liberties; and that the city of London shall fully have all its liberties and free customs as well by land as water." The person of the freeman was thus protected: “No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his freehold, or liberties, or free customs, or be outlawed or exiled, or be any other wise destroyed; nor will we pass upon him, nor send upon him, but by lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land. We will sell to no man, we will not deny or delay to any man, justice or right." The holding of the freeman, the goods of the merchant, the waggon of the villain were not to be torn from their owners.

12. Such was the nature of that remarkable document, in whose completion Langton's pen and Fitzwalter's sword had about an equal share. The Latin bears in every line the distinct stamp of a clear business brain,-the sharp, incisive, farseeing sweep of a lawyer's practised eye. "Thirty-two times," says Sir Edward Coke, "have the Great Charter and the Charter of the Forests1 been confirmed by Acts of Parliament;"—a thing not to be wondered at, for Truth, Justice, and Freedom are of slow growth in the history of nations, needing an occasional storm to scatter decaying leaves, and to strike roots with a firmer grip in the earth.

Charter of the Forests, first signed by Henry III. in 1217.