the burgesses would voluntarily pay, for the sake of getting rid of the obnoxious petty tyranny of the bailiff, and recovering their own local self-government. This led the king and other lords of towns to farm them to the burgesses themselves, who paid a fixed rent, and were thenceforth said to hold their town in fee-farm, or by burgage tenure. They also obtained charters entitling them to elect their own chief officer, who generally took the Norman title of Mayor. Other privileges were similarly purchased; for, a fine of money was almost invariably the consideration on which a charter was granted; and the cupidity of the lords made them seek pretexts for declaring that a borough had forfeited its charter, in which case another fine for a re-grant was exacted. Besides these liabilities to the king, or other lord of the city or land, the burgesses were liable to be tallaged; that is, to have special contributions of money levied on them for the lord's behalf, in the same way that aids were exacted by him of his tenants of land. The political rights, (in judicial and other matters) of the middle and upper classes, the powers of the sovereign, and the general legal system of the age, will be most conveniently considered, when we discuss the terms of the Great Charter and its supplements. We may at present best proceed to a view of the circumstances under which Magna Carta was gained from John; how it was renewed under Henry III.; and how its powers were extended and confirmed by the final charter of Edward I. CHAPTER X. Evil Character of King John.-Its Importance to our History.Fortunate Loss of Normandy.-John's Quarrels with his Clergy and with the Pope.-The Interdict.-The Excommunication.John's abject Submission to the Pope.-Return of Archbishop Langton to England. His patriotic Character. He checks the King-King's Oath to redress Wrongs.-His repeated Acts of Tyranny.-Council of the Barons.-Archbishop Langton produces the Charter of Henry I.-Nature of this Charter, and its Value.— Demands of the Barons on the King.-Vain Intervention of the Pope.-Firmness of Archbishop Langton.—Strength of the National Party.-Runnymede.-Articuli Carta.-The Grant of the Great Charter. THE Father of History sums up the evil qualities of a Despot in these words: "He subverts the laws and usages of the country, he violates women, and he puts people to death without trial."* The character and conduct of King John exemplify every word of this emphatic definition. The feudal law of England (as it has been described in the preceding * Νόμαιά τε κινεῖ πάτρια, καὶ βιᾶται γυναῖκας, κτείνει τε ἀκρίTOUS.-HERODOTUs, Thalia, lxxx. The old chronicler, the Waverley annalist, says of John, that the old laws and free customs of the realm "Maxime suo tempore corruptæ nimis et aggravatæ fuerant; nam quosdam absque judicio parium suo rum exhæredebat, nonnullos morte durissimâ condemnabat. Uxores filiasque eorum violabat ; et ita pro lege ei erat tyrannica voluntas."-P. 181. RISE AND PROGRESS OF THE CONSTITUTION. 107 chapters) gave him oppressively strong powers over his barons and other subjects; but the savage tyranny of John was exercised over every class, high and low, often without the semblance, and in open defiance of the law. Several of his predecessors had solemnly promulgated charters, which tended to restrain the abuses of feudal rule. These charters usually contained also general promises to respect ancient rights, to cease to follow evil practices, and to maintain the old liberties of the people. The kings who gave them, often violated them; but they were recognitions (though vague and imperfect ones) of rights that ought to limit the royal will: and none even of the most arbitrary of the six first Anglo-Norman kings professed to govern without regard to legal rules and restrictions.* The seventh set at nought every restraint of law, either human or divine; and what was afterwards said of Henry VIII. might, with more truth, have been affirmed of John, that he spared neither woman in his lust, nor man in his revenge. But John was utterly destitute of such high abilities and resolute will as signalized the haughty Tudor. John mingled all the qualities that inspire contempt with those that provoke hatred. His portrait has been thus truly as well as powerfully drawn by Lingard :"He stands before us polluted with meanness, cruelty, perjury, and murder; uniting with an ambition, which rushed through every crime to the attainment of its object, a pusillanimity which often, at the sole appearance of opposition, sank into despondency. Arrogant in prosperity, abject in adversity, he neither conciliated affection in the * See Guizot's "History of ters of William the Conqueror, Representative Government," Government," Henry I., Stephen, and Henry part 2, lecture vi., on the Char II. one nor esteem in the other. His dissimulation was so well known, that it seldom deceived; his suspicion served only to multiply his enemies, and the knowledge of his vindictive temper contributed to keep open the breach betwixt him and those who had incurred his displeasure." A few only of the specific instances of the tyranny of this bad, but not bold man, may be cited here; besides referring to his murder of his nephew Arthur, which he was believed by his contemporaries to have perpetrated with his own hand.* William de Braosse, one of his nobles, had offended him and escaped to Ireland. John, in 1211, got into his power De Braosse's wife, Matilda, their son William, and their son's wife. The king then gratified his fiendish malignity by sending these three prisoners to Windsor Castle, where he had them shut up in a dungeon and starved to death. In the next year, one of his clergy, Geoffry of Norwich, whom the old chronicler terms a loyal, learned, and accomplished man, came under the capricious displeasure of the king. John had him seized and carried off to Nottingham Castle, where he put him to death with refined and subtle tortures. I Under his tyranny there was no more safeguard for property than for person. His exactions were often made with open and undisguised violence, § though they were *See for the various narratives as to the manner in which John committed this murder, the "Pictorial History of England," vol. i. p. 519. + Matthew Paris, 230. Roger de Wendover, "Chron.," vol. iii. p. 235. Matthew Paris, 232. "Fecit pœnâ excogitatâ usque ad mor tem torqueri:" according to another chronicler, John had him wrapped in a cope of lead and left to die of starvation. § For instance, in 1203, he forced from his subjects, clerical as well as lay, a seventh part of their moveables. See Roger de Wendover, vol. iii. p. 173, who names the "hujus rapinæ exe also often practised in the form of judicial fines, which John levied upon men and women on the most trivial and insulting pretexts.* The grossness and the frequency of his outrages on the honour of private families almost surpass belief; and Eustace de Vesci was but one of many, who, when they rose against John as the public enemy of the country, were animated also by the fiercest indignation for the wrongs that had been offered them as husbands or as fathers, by the brutal licentiousness of the king. + I have dwelt on the subject of the character of John, because that character had a most important effect on our constitutional history. Had he been less vicious and cruel, it is probable that the barons would not have leagued with the inferior freemen of England against their Norman king. Had he been less imbecile, it is probable that the national league would have been crushed by him. Even the foreign events of John's reign (I mean those which more immediately affected the continental provinces of the Plantagenet princes) were of infinite moment in determining the future destinies of England. cutores." In 1205 he extorted from them a sum which the chronicler terms "infinite."Ib. 182. * "The Bishop of Winchester paid a tun of good wine for not reminding the king (John) to give a girdle to the Countess of Albemarle ; and Robert de Vaux five best palfreys that the same king might hold his peace about Henry Pinel's wife. Another paid four marks for leave to eat (prolicentiâ comedendi)."—Hal lam's Middle Ages, vol. ii. p. 317. Citing from "Madox's History of the Exchequer." 249. + See Walter de Hemingburg, According to tradition. John had caused the daughter of another great baronial chief to be poisoned, in revenge for her having resisted his dishonourable solicitations. See the legends respecting Marian Fitzwalter, in Thomson's "Magna Carta," p. 505. |