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sheriffs, foresters, or officers of the king, who should exceed the strict line of their duty, as limited by those laws.

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John returned from France, denouncing vengeance. Military execution, he said, should fall upon the traitors; and in savage earnest of his threat he let loose a band of mercenaries on the lands of his recusant nobles. Langton confronted him at Northampton, and adjured him to beware of the violation of an oath ; reminding him that vassals must suffer by the judgment of their peers, and not by lawless violence. Rule you the church,' shouted the king, and leave me to rule the state.' He pushed on to Nottingham, and was there again confronted by the cardinal; who threatened, if the justice of a trial should continue to be refused, to excommunicate all, with exception of the king himself, engaged in a cause so impious. John yielded; and a summons was sent to the accused to appear before himself or his justices. A summons more surely meant to be obeyed, was at the same time sent to them from Langton, to meet at St. Paul's in London in a fortnight from that date, and ascertain the damages sustained in the recent quarrel.

They met ostensibly with that purpose; but what really passed is told by Mathew of Paris. Langton drew the Barons aside as they entered, and having privately appealed to each to forego his mere personal claim, again publicly produced the charter of Henry Beauclerc, read it aloud (few of his noble hearers could have done that), and, amid loud acclamations, commented on its outraged provisions, one by one. It is added by the writer of the contemporary Annals of Waverly, in proof of the enthusiasm thus excited, that Langton availed himself of it to administer, before the meeting closed, an oath to every baron assembled, solemnly binding them to each other to achieve the recovery of those liberties, or to die in the struggle. The sword was now drawn, and the scabbard cast away.

His Holiness became alarmed for his English fief. Cardinal Nicholas of Tusculum came hastily to England with the title of legate, and with importunate letters to Langton. The king caught at this hope of help with desperate energy; renewed to him his oath of fealty; and, with a prostrate eagerness of selfdebasement, offered to do him homage as the papal representative, though, by previous agreement, bound to do this only to his Holiness himself. The offer was accepted, and the second surrender of England to Rome took place in Westminster at the Christmas

festival of 1213. But not without interruption did this second solemn degradation pass. Langton came forward with a protest, and laid it upon the altar at its close. The legate returned to Rome with his new forma juramenti fidelitatis,' sealed with gold; and with report to Innocent, that John was the most pious of princes, and Langton the most factious of archbishops.

Before a new step was taken nearly a year had passed, occupied by the disastrous campaign in France which ended at the battle of Beauvines, and brought back John to a more inglorious struggle, for which, on the side of the Barons, the interval had been well prepared. His intemperance gave them the occasion for which alone they waited. His gross indulgences had never been so scandalous or violent as between the October and November of 1214. The Justiciary Fitz Peter had always exerted some control, and his death was the first welcome news that saluted John's return. It is well,' he cried; in Hell he may again shake hands with primate Herbert, for surely he will find him there. He leaves me here, God's teeth! at last the lord of England.' But even as he spoke, the Grand Confederacy was in motion. The 20th of November was the Festival of St. Edmund's, and an opportutunity for assembling in numbers without awaking suspicion. All the Barons in the league met accordingly on that day in the abbey, on pretence of celebrating the saint's festival, but in reality to mature their plan of future proceeding; to define the different liberties on which they were prepared to insist; and to resolve on demanding them in a body from the king at the approaching festival of Christmas. Before they separated, each baron, according to his station, advanced singly to the high altar, and, laying his hand upon it, took solemn oath to withdraw his fealty from John if he should continue to refuse the rights demanded; and further, until the unreserved concession of those rights, to levy war upon him.

The End was now begun; and, from this memorable day until the day of Runnymede, Langton seems to have remained by the side of the king. The inference that he was become in any respect favourable to him, is monstrous. It was even at this time, while, with Pembroke and with Warrenne, he was almost the only illustrious or powerful Englishman who remained with the banner of John, that he rejected with haughty and stern refusal that final appeal from his spiritual chief at Rome which inveighed against his participation in the injustice of refusing to John those rights which the

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crown had peaceably possessed during the reigns of his father and brother; which charged him, the archbishop, with having fomented the whole disturbance; and which commanded him, on pain of excommunication, to exert his authority to restore peace between the king and his vassals. The truth is that Langton rejoined the king to control his treacherous violence, as he had associated with the barons to concentrate their wavering purpose. He was with John when the great vassals and tenants deserted his summons to the court at Worcester, and left him to celebrate his Christmas festival alone. When the king left Worcester suddenly, came to London, and shut himself up in the Temple, Langton was still in attendance on him. His motive may be seen in the first transaction which took place on the appearance of the confederated barons at the gates of the Temple. Mathew of Paris describes it thus: Here, then (to the New Temple Inn), came to the king the aforesaid great barons, in a very resolute manner, with their military dresses and weapons, almost demanding the liberties and laws of king Edward, with others, for themselves, the kingdom, and the Church of England, to be granted and confirmed according to the charter of King Henry the First. But the king hearing that the barons were so resolute in their demands, was much concerned at their impetuosity. And when he saw that they were furnished for battle, he replied that it was a great and difficult thing which they asked, 'from which he required a respite until after Easter, that he might have space for consideration; and if it were in the power of him'self or the dignity of his crown, they should receive satisfaction. But at length, after many proposals, the king unwillingly con'sented that the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Ely, and William Marshall (Earl of Pembroke) should be made sureties; ⚫ and that by reason of their intercession, on the day fixed, he would satisfy all. For offices of this nature, never affecting to conceal the part he had taken or the exertions he was still prepared to make, Langton, in his character of one of the great dignitaries of state, continued by the side of the king.

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Only two barons and one bishop of the Confederacy had shrunk from the ordeal of this first personal encounter with John. The Earl of Chester, the Lord William Brewer, and the bishop of Winchester, went over to his side. The rest were immovable; and how formidable, the king seems for the first time to have felt. He garrisoned his castles; sent to Flanders and Poitou

for the services of foreign vassals; propitiated the English clergy by enormous and absurd concessions; ordered his sheriffs to tender the oath of allegiance to the freemen of the different counties; and, to secure to himself the privileges and support which the church gave to Crusaders, embraced the cross. But he could neither avert the approach of that fatal Easter, nor collect around his standard an available force of resistance. The barons met in the appointed week at Stamford, and accompanied by more than two thousand knights, their esquires and followers, marched to Brackley. The king was but a few miles distant, at Oxford. Between the two places, Langton, Pembroke, and Warrenne, commissioned to ascertain their precise demands, met the leaders of the barons; and after brief conference took back a paper to the king.

They might as well have demanded my crown!' he furiously exclaimed, on hearing this paper read. Do they think I will 'grant them liberties which will make me a slave?" The words very strikingly express for what purpose these men had taken arms. It was to subject the sovereign to a dominion which they themselves and their special claims represented less perfectly than that general principle of Resistance which they also grandly embodied. Langton and the commissioners were remanded with several evasive proposals, successively rejected by the barons. We stand to our original demands,' they said; and nothing short of these can now content us.' A strange discussion ensued in the king's camp. Pandulf and the Bishop of Exeter, the most trusted of John's advisers, were for trying, as in the last resort, the effect of excommunication; but Langton, when reminded that he was bound to exercise this awful function by order of the pontiff, replied that he was better acquainted with the duties of his spiritual lord, and that if he used his power, it should not be against the barons at Brackley, but against those foreign troops. who now surrounded them in Oxford, and whom it was the duty, as it would be the interest of the king, to send back to whence they came.

In utter despair, John offered one more compromise. The matters in dispute he proposed to refer to nine arbiters; four chosen by the barons, four chosen by himself, and the Pope acting as the ninth; by whose decision, or the decision of the majority, he would abide. This was also refused; and as the commissioners left the camp, the barons, to close all further avenue of hope, pro

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claimed themselves the army of God and his holy church,' and elected Robert Fitzwalter as their head. Fitzwalter had suffered peculiar and terrible wrong at the hands of John; and with Eustace de Vesci, who had also a personal quarrel to avenge, had been most active and efficient in the Grand Confederacy.

A month decided all. Northampton was first invested by Fitzwalter the burgesses of Bedford then forced their governor to open their gates while in this latter city, an invitation was received from the principal London citizens and on the morning of the 17th of May, 1215, the army of God and his holy church entered and occupied the metropolis. Proclamations were now issued to the barons and knights throughout England hitherto neutral stating their objects, their resources, and their resolve to treat as enemies all who were not friends: and these appeals were largely answered. It is idle, say the old historians, to recount the barons who composed and completed that national army; they were the whole nobility of England. It is supposed that when John, soon after the occupation of London, sent Pembroke to treat submissively, he had not ten of the more powerful barons assembled under his banner.

But it was in circumstances such as these that his profound hypocrisy served him as a kind of resource. He had now assumed an air of cheerfulness. Pembroke was ordered to tell the confederates that their petitions should be granted. It only remained to name the day and the place. He was himself at Windsor at this time; the barons were encamped at Staines; and the place was fixed at a flat green meadow by the river side between, and the day on the 15th June.

On the 15th of June, 1215, there accordingly began, upon the plain of Runnymede, the most memorable transaction of the English history. Two encampments, slightly apart from each other, were formed upon it. John sate upon the one side attended by Langton and eight bishops; by the papal envoy, Pandulf; by Almeric, the Master of the Templars; by William of Pembroke; by the Earls of Salisbury, Warrenne, Arundel, and Hubert de Burgh; and by ten other gentlemen; of which scant attendance of advisers many were known to be hostile. On the other side stood Fitzwalter, and a majority of the whole English nobility. The first proceeding was to enact certain securities for the due observance of the instrument which the king was to be called upon to sign. It was required that he should disband and dismiss all his foreign

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