1154-1189.]

RICHARD I.

43

part he took in the murder of Thomas à Becket, did penance by walking barefoot to the tomb of the "holy martyr," at Canterbury, there submitting to be whipped on his bare back by the monks. But under his temporal government England prospered: it recovered from the shock of the Norman conquest, its commerce revived, the people became more obedient to the law, and the lower orders, particularly the inhabitants of cities and boroughs, increased in wealth and importance.1

RICHARD I., surnamed Cœur de Lion, succeeded his father, Henry, in 1189: he became infatuated by the Crusades, and he devoted all his power and energy to raise money for his expedition to the Holy Land. The nation was not, in his reign, benefited by any advance in constitutional government; but its prosperity was increased by the diffusion of property, as he supplied his wants, to a large extent, by the sale of crown lands, and by grants of property and privileges to many cities and boroughs. Municipal Charters began to be granted in his reign, giving the borough, often with adjacent lands, in perpetuity to the inhabitants as burgesses; and freedom from tallage or taxation in exchange for a perpetual fee-farm rent to the king or lord. These charters, however, did not incorporate the boroughs as municipal corporations, in the modern sense, of giving them a perpetual name and existence, with various legal powers; no such charter of municipal incorporation having been granted before the reign of Henry VI.; but they produced a combination and common interest in the

1 Peers' Report, vol. i. p. 52. Sir H.Spelman says, "But there happened about this time a notable alteration in the commonwealth: lords and owners of towns, which before manured their lands by tenants-at-will, began now to grant their estates in fee, and thereby to make a great multitude of freeholders more than had been, who, by reason of their several interests, and being not so absolutely tied to their lords as in former times, began to be of a more eminent part in the commonwealth, and more to be respected therefore in making laws to bind them and their inheritance." (Spelman on Parliaments.)

* Merewether on Boroughs, vol. i., introduction.

inhabitants, which led to self-government, and gave them the means for protecting themselves, not only against the encroachments of the lord, but against interference with their trade; and it was not long before the boroughs obtained public influence and importance, that could not have been acquired by individual residents in the boroughs. Monasteries greatly increased during the reigns of Henry I., Stephen, and Henry II. The author of the "Notitia Monastica" computes the number at not less than 300; more monasteries and religious houses being founded in the kingdom in these reigns than in five hundred years before. The lands with which they were endowed were held by the tenure of frankalmoigne, or free alms.2

The absence of the King during the greater part of his reign withdrew all attention from state affairs; but the prosperity of the nation was silently advancing. Property, by the course of natural events,-by marriages and deaths, by the division of lands among female coheirs, by subinfeudation and sales (the latter greatly stimulated by the desire of promoting the Crusades), by forfeitures and escheats and regrants from the Crown,-became divided and diffused, and the lands of the kingdom passed into numerous hands. The industry of the boroughs, and the application of it to manufactures, produced or greatly extended personal property; and the increase and diffusion of wealth prepared and prompted the nation to demand the changes which will be described in the next chapter.3

1 Littleton's Henry II., vol. ii. p. 329. ? Ellis's Domesday Book, p. 252.

3 Peers' Report, vol. i. p. 32.

John's Accession contrary to Primogeniture.-Loss of Normandy. -His Vassalage to the Pope.-Combination of the Barons.-Demand of a Charter. John gains over the Pope.-War declared.-Conference.— Magna Charta.-Its Form and Scope.-Liberties to the Church.The Feudal Lords and Vassals.-To Towns and Trade.-For the Administration of Justice.-To Freemen.-Its Constitutional Principles of Government.-Security for its Observance.-Charter of the Forest. -John's Death.-Confirmations by Henry III.-Religious Ceremony. -Edward I.-Confirmatio Chartarum.-Articuli super Chartas.-Statutes of Confirmation.

JOHN, on the death of his brother Richard, possessed himself of the duchy of Normandy, and afterwards of the crown of England, to the prejudice of Arthur, Duke of Bretagne, the son of his elder brother, Geoffrey,-a proof that the law of primogeniture in the descent of the crown had not taken strong hold of the nation, or a design so flagitious would not have been successful.

The foreign provinces held with the duchy of Normandy were more influenced by the law of feudal descent. They espoused the right of Arthur, and called on Philip Augustus, King of France, as their paramount lord, to support the rightful heir. A war followed between John and Philip, but

it ended fatally for Arthur, who was delivered into John's power, and afterwards removed by murder to give legal sanction to John's occupancy of the throne. In a subsequent war between the same monarchs Normandy was lost, and was never afterwards restored to the crown of England.

The measure of Henry II. to diminish the distinction between the civil and ecclesiastical orders of men in the administration of justice, and to keep the kingdom independent of the Pope of Rome, received a signal overthrow in the reign of his son John. In the settlement of a dispute respecting the choice of an Archbishop of Canterbury, in which the monks of Canterbury had made an election contrary to his own, John appealed to the Pope, who dismissed both appointments, and chose Stephen de Langton to be the new Archbishop. John resisted the Pope's decree with great obstinacy, and the latter put him through the succession of coercive measures employed by that power to reduce refractory monarchs to obedience. He placed, first, his kingdom under the sentence of interdict, which was followed by excommunication, and then by deposition from his throne: the latter the Pope empowered and directed the King of France to carry into execution, by taking possession of John's dominions. John's opposition, broken down by these means, was finally overcome by the persuasion of Pandulph, the Pope's legate. To obtain the withdrawal of the papal decrees,-which his own superstition and that of all ranks of the people invested with a terrible reality, involving their peace and happiness, temporal and eternal,—and to avert the French invasion then in forward preparation,-John surrendered his lordship of Ireland and his crown and kingdom of England to the Pope and his successors, through the medium of Pandulph, basely agreeing to hold them as vassal of the Church of Rome, by the annual payment of one thousand marks. John ratified this agreement, by doing homage to Pandulph in the submissive forms which the feudal law established between vassals and their liege lord.

1199-1216.] COMBINATION OF THE BARONS.

47

These events produced great dissatisfaction, which was heightened by a sense of the insufficiency of the charters granted by John's predecessors, to remove or moderate the tyrannous prerogatives, and the exactions and impositions, which they professed to have made illegal. John's personal conduct also towards his barons and their families increased the general discontent,' which at length became so great, that it was resolved to make an effort to obtain from the King a solemn and binding declaration of the royal prerogatives, and of the lawful rights and liberties of the people. The events which led to this resolution will be found in the writings of the historians, in whose narratives we cannot fail to be struck with the patriotism, the determination, and the valour of the barons; to feel proud of our ancient aristocracy, and grateful for their care of the liberties of the people. Nor should it be forgotten that the movement was supported by the clergy; it is even said to have originated in the exhortations of the new Archbishop, Stephen de Langton, "a man," says Hume, "whose memory ought always to be respected by the English."2

Cardinal Langton was an Englishman; and whatever other motives may have influenced him, it is not improbable that those of patriotism were amongst them. It is said that he showed to some of the discontented barons a copy of the charter of Henry I., which he had found in Canterbury Cathedral, and encouraged them to insist upon a renewal of it.3 For that purpose a confederacy was formed, which was

1 Sir Walter Raleigh gives the following reasons for John's unpopularity :-" Standing accursed, whereby few or none obeyed him, for his nobility refused to follow him into Scotland; and he had so grieved the people by pulling down all the pales before harvest, to the end his deer might spoil the corn; and by seizing the temporalities of so many bishoprics into his hands; and chiefly for practising the death of the Duke of Bretagne, his nephew; so as the hearts of all men were turned from him." (The Prerogative of Parliaments in England, by Sir W. Raleigh, 1640. Harleian Miscellany, vol. iv. p. 304.)

2 Hume, ch. ii.

3 Sir Walter Raleigh's account is that "the Charter of Henry I. was