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ed all temporal assistants. But what was his surprise, when the archbishop refused to excommunicate a single baron, and peremptorily opposed his commands! John, stung with resentment and regret, knew not where to turn for advice or comfort as he had hitherto sported with the happiness of mankind, he could not reasonably complain if his people secretly rejoiced in his sufferings. He now began to think that any terms were to be complied with; and that it was better to reign a limited prince than sacrifice his crown, and perhaps his life, to ambition. But first he offered to refer all differences to the pope alone, or to eight barons, four to be chosen by himself and four by the confederates. This the barons scornfully rejected. He then assured them that he would submit at discretion, and that it was his supreme pleasure to grant all their demands: a conference was accordingly appointed, and all things were adjusted for this most important treaty.

The ground where the king's commissioners met the barons was between Staines and Windsor, at a place called Runnymead, still held in reverence by posterity, as the spot where the standard of freedom was first erected in England. There the barons appeared, with a vast number of knights and warriors, on the fifteenth day of June, 1215, while those on the king's part came a day or two after. Both sides encamped apart, like open enemies. The debates between power and precedent are generally but of short continuance. The barons, determined on carrying their aims, would admit of few abatements; and the king's agents being for the most part in their interests, few debates ensued. After some days, the king, with a facility that was somewhat suspicious, signed and sealed the charter required of him; a charter which continues in force to this day, and is the famous bulwark of English liberty, known by the name of MAGNA CHARTA. This famous deed either granted or secured very important privileges to those orders of the kingdom that were already possessed of freedom, namely, to the clergy, the barons, and the gentlemen; as for the inferior and the greatest part of the people, they were still treated as slaves, and it was long before they could come to a participation of legal protection.

The clergy, by this charter, had their former grants confirmed. All check upon appeals to Rome was removed, by allowance to every man to depart the kingdom at pleasure; and the fines upon the clergy, for any offence, were ordained to be proportionable to their temporal, not their ecclesiastical possessions. With respect to the barons, they were secured in the custody of the vacant abbeys and convents which were under their patronage. The reliefs or duties to be paid for earldoms, baronies, and knights' fees, were fixed, which before were arbitrary. This charter decreed, that barons should recover the lands of their vassals, forfeited for felony, after being a year and a day in possession of the crown; that they should enjoy the wardships of their military tenants, who held other lands of the crown by a different tenure; that a person knighted by the king, though a minor, should enjoy the privileges of a full

grown man, provided he was a ward of the crown. It enacted, that heirs should be married without disparagement; and before the marriage was contracted, the nearest relations were to be informed of it. No scutage or tax was to be imposed upon the people by the great council of the nation, except in three particular cases; the king's captivity, the knighting his eldest son, and the marrying his eldest daughter. When the great council was to be assembled, the prelates, earls, and great barons, were to be called to it by a particular writ, the inferior barons by the summons of the sheriff. It also ordained, that the king should not seize any baron's land for a debt to the crown, if the baron possessed personal property sufficient to discharge the debt. No vassal was to be allowed to sell so much of his land, as to incapacitate him from performing the necessary service to his lord. With respect to the people, the following were the principal clauses calculated for their benefit. It was ordained, that all the privileges and immunities, granted by the king to his barons, should be also granted by the barons to their vassals. One weight and one measure, it was declared, shall be observed throughout the whole kingdom; merchants shall be allowed to transact all business, without being exposed to any arbitrary tolls and impositions; they, and all freemen, shall be allowed to go out of the kingdom, and return to it at pleasure; London, and all cities and boroughs, shall preserve their ancient liberties, immunities, and free customs; aids or taxes shall not be required of them, except by the consent of the great council; no towns or individuals shall be obliged to make or support bridges, but by ancient customs; the goods of every freeman shall be disposed according to his will; if he die intestate, his heirs shall succeed to them; no officer of the crown shall take any horses, carts, or wood, without the consent of the owner; the king's courts of justice shall be stationary, and shall no longer follow his person; they shall be open to every one, and justice shall no longer be bought, refused, or delayed by them; the sheriffs shall be incapacitated to hold pleas of the crown, and shall not put any person upon his trial from rumour or suspicion alone, but upon the evidence of lawful witnesses; no freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or dispossessed of his free tenement and liberties, or outlawed, or banished, or anywise hurt or injured, unless by the legal judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land; and all who suffered otherwise, in this and the two former reigns, shall be restored to their rights and possessions; every freeman shall be fined in proportion to his fault, and no fine shall be levied on him to his utter ruin. Such were the stipulations in favour of that part of the people, who, being either merchants or the descendants of the nobles or of the clergy, were thus independent of an immediate lord. But that part of the people who tilled the ground, who constituted, in all probability, the majority of the nation, had but one single clause in their favour, which stipulated, that no villain or rustic should by any fine be bereaved of his carts, ploughs, and instruments of husbandry. As for the rest, they were considered as a part of the pro

perty belonging to an estate, and passed away with the horses, cows, and other moveables, at the will of the owner.

This great charter being agreed to by all, signed by both parties, and ratified, the barons, knowing the perfidious disposition of the king, endeavoured to secure the observance of it by prevailing upon him to appoint twenty-five of their order as conservators of the public liberty. These were to admonish the king, if he should act contrary to his written obligations; and, in case of resistance, they might levy war against him, and attack his castles. John, with his usual perfidy, seemed to submit passively to all these regulations, however injurious to majesty; and even sent writs to the sheriffs, ordering them to constrain every one to swear obedience to the twenty-five barons. He pretended that his government was henceforth to undergo a total reformation, more indulgent to the liberty and independence of the people. His subjects therefore flattered themselves with brighter prospects; and it was thought the king's misfortunes had humanized his disposition.

But John's seeming tranquillity was mere dissimulation. The more care his barons had taken to bind him to their will, the more impatient he grew under their restrictions. He burned with desire to shake off the conditions they had imposed upon him. The submissions he had paid to the pope, and the insults he had sustained from the king of France, slightly affected him, as they were his equals; but the sense of his subjection to his own vassals sunk deep in his mind; and he was determined, at all events, to recover his former power of doing mischief. He grew sullen, silent, and reserved. He shunned the society of his former companions, and even retired into the Isle of Wight, as if to hide his disgrace in solitude. He was still, however, employed in machinations to obtain revenge. He had sent to the continent to enlist a large body of mercenary troops; he had made complaints to the pope of the insurrections of his subjects against him; and the pontiff very warmly espoused his cause. A bull was sent over, annulling the whole charter; and at the same time the foreign forces arrived, whom John intended to employ in giving efficacy to his intentions.

He now no longer took shelter under the arts of dissimulation, but acted the bold tyrant; a character that became him much better. The barons, after obtaining the charter, seemed to have been lulled into a fatal security; and took no measures for assembling their forces in case of the introduction of a foreign army. The king, therefore, was for some time undisputed master of the field, at the head of an army of Germans, Brabantines, and Flemings, all eager for battle, and inspired with the hopes of dividing the kingdom among them. The castle of Rochester was first invested, and, after an obstinate resistance, was obliged to surrender at discretion. John, irritated at the length of the siege, was going to hang the governor and all the garrison, contrary to the laws of war; but, at the intercession of one of his generals, he only put the inferior prisoners to death. After the reduction of this important fortress, the royal

interests began to prevail; and two armies were formed, with one of which the king marched northward, subduing all fortresses and towns that lay in his way. The other army, commanded by the earl of Salisbury, was equally vigorous and successful; several submitted at his approach, and London itself was in the utmost danger. The foreign mercenaries committed the most horrible cruelties in their march, and ravaged the country in a most dreadful manner, being urged at once by their natural rapacity and the cruelty of the king. Nothing was seen but the flames of villages and castles; consternation and misery were pictured in the looks of the people; and tortures were every where exercised by the soldiers to make the inhabitants reveal their riches. Wherever the king marched, the provinces were laid waste on each side of his progress; for he considered every estate which was not his immediate property as entirely hostile, and a proper object of military execution.

The barons, reduced to this deplorable situation, their estates destroyed, their liberties annihilated, and their persons exposed to the revenge of a malicious tyrant, lost all power of self-defence. They were able to raise no army in England that could stand before their ravager, and yet they had no hopes from submission. In this desperate exigence they applied to the old enemy of their country, Philip king of France, and offered to acknowledge Lewis, the eldest son of that monarch, as their sovereign, on condition of his affording them protection against their domestic destroyer. No proffer could have been more agreeable to this ambitious monarch, who long wanted to annex England to the rest of his dominions. He therefore instantly embraced the proposal of the barons, of whom, however, he demanded five and twenty hostages for the performance of their promise. These being sent over, he began to make the most diligent preparations for this expedition, regardless of the menaces of the pope, who threatened Philip with excommunication, and actually excommunicated Lewis some time after. The first detachment consisted of a body of seven thousand men, which he re-enforced soon after by a powerful army, commanded by Lewis himself, who landed at Sandwich without opposition.

John, who but just now saw himself in the career of victory, upon the landing of the French army was stopped all of a sudden, and found himself disappointed in his revenge and ambition. The first effect of their appearance was, that most of the foreign troops deserted, refusing to serve against the heir of their monarchy. Many considerable noblemen also deserted his party; and his castles daily fell into the hands of his enemies. Thus England saw nothing but a prospect of being every way undone. If John succeeded, a tyrannical and implacable monarch was to be their tormentor; if Lewis should prevail, the country was ever after to submit to a more powerful monarchy, and was to become a province to France. What neither human prudence could foresee, nor policy suggest, was brought about by a happy and unexpected concurrence of

events. Neither John nor Lewis succeeded in their designs upon the people's happiness and freedom.

Lewis, having vainly endeavoured to pacify the pope's legate, resolved to set the pope at defiance, and marched his army against the castle of Rochester, which he quickly reduced. Thence he advanced to London, where the barons and burghers did him homage, and took the oath of fealty, after he had sworn to confirm the liberties and privileges of the people. Though never crowned king of England, yet he exercised sovereign authority, granting charters, and appointing officers of state. But how flattering soever the prospect before him appeared, yet there was a secret jealousy that was destroying his ambition and undermining all his pretensions. Through a great degree of imprudence, he on every occasion showed a visible preference to his natural French subjects, to the detriment of those he came to govern. The suspicions of the English against him were increased by the death-bed confession of the count de Melun, one of his courtiers, who declared to those about him, that it was the intention of Lewis to exterminate the English barons as traitors, and to bestow their dignities and estates on his own French subjects, upon whose fidelity he could safely rely. Whatever truth there might be in this confession, it greatly operated upon the minds of the people; so that the earl of Salisbury and other noblemen, who had forsaken John's party, now returned to him, and gave no small lustre to his cause.

In the meantime John was assembling a considerable army, with a view to make one great effort for the crown; and, at the head of a large body of troops, he resolved to penetrate into the heart of the kingdom. With these resolutions he departed from Lynn, which for its fidelity he had distinguished with many marks of favour, and directed his route towards Lincolnshire. His road lay along the shore, which was overflowed at high water; but not being apprized of this, or being ignorant of the tides of the place, he lost all his carriages, treasures, and baggage by the influx. He himself escaped with the greatest difficulty, and arrived at the abbey of Swinsted, where his grief for the loss he had sustained, and the distracted state of his affairs, threw him into a fever, which soon appeared to be fatal. Next day, being unable to ride on horseback, he was carried in a litter to the castle of Sleaford, and thence removed to Newark, where, after having made his will, he died, in the fifty-first year of his age, and the eighteenth of his reign.

This monster's character is too strongly marked in every transaction of his life, to leave the smallest necessity for disentangling it from the ordinary occurrences of his reign. It was destructive to the people, and ruinous to himself. He left two legitimate sons behind him; Henry, who succeeded him on the throne, and was now nine years of age; and Richard, who was about seven. He left also three daughters; Jane, married to Alexander II. king of Scotland; Eleanor, the wife of the earl of Pembroke; and Isabella, married to the emperor Frederick II. His illegitimate children were numerous, but unnoted.