LECTURE XXXVII.

John’s dispute with the court of Rome—Cardinal Langton promoted to be Archbishop of Canterbury—Pope Innocent lays the kingdom under an interdict—John is excommunicated—His submission to Innocent—The discontents of the Barons—Magna Charta and Charta de Foresta—An examination of the question, Whether the rights and liberties, contained in these charters, are to be considered as the antient rights and liberties of the nation, or as the fruits of rebellion, and revocable by the successors of John?

If Alexander the Third shewed the grandeur of the pontifical power in humbling Henry the Second, the displaying it in its full glory was reserved for Innocent the Third who now reigned, and who being promoted to the papacy at the age of thirty seven, had vigour of body and mind to carry every point he engaged in, and was resolved to push his power to the utmost. Having tasted the sweets of English gold, in the collection made under pretence of the holy war, he had a great desire to renew the experiment; and that he might be able to proceed with the less opposition, was resolved to have an archbishop of Canterbury at his devotion; and the See falling vacant, a controverted election furnished him with an opportunity.

The election belonged to the convent of Christ-church, though it was contested with them by the suffragan bishops. The very night the archbishop died, a faction of the younger monks resolving to have an archbishop of their own chusing, assembled, and chose Reginald sub-prior of the convent, and sent him off before morning for Rome, to obtain the Pope’s confirmation, of which they did not entertain any doubt, as it would be plucking a feather from the king’s prerogative, that of a previous licence for proceeding to election; and Innocent had already shewn that he looked on himself as monarch of monarchs. But as they could not expect the Pope would take this stride in support of a clandestine election, they all took an oath of secrecy, to be observed till the confirmation was obtained.

But Reginald’s vanity defeated the scheme, and made him divulge it, which so provoked his electors, that they joined with the others, petitioned the king for a license, and elected, at his recommendation, the bishop of Norwich, and twelve of the monks were dispatched to solicit his confirmation. The suffragan bishops opposed him, as being elected without their concurrence, which point was determined for the convent by Innocent; notwithstanding which, without assigning any invalidity in the second election, he annulled it as well as the first, and recommended to the twelve deputies to elect Stephen Langton, an Englishman and a cardinal. At first they demurred, as having no authority; but the threat of instant excommunication compelled them to obey. And then, as if they had done nothing out of the way, he recommended Langton to John in a very civil letter. The king, enraged to the highest, turned the monks of Canterbury, who were entirely innocent, out of their convent and the kingdom, and threatened the Pope that he would suffer no appeals. Innocent, who had before this humbled Philip of France by an interdict, and knew the man he had to deal with, proceeded very calmly, to order three bishops to exhort the king to receive Langton, and recall the monks; and, in case of non-compliance, to lay the kingdom under an interdict[387].

The name of interdict frightened John, who knew how much he was hated. He offered to comply, if he might be allowed to make a protestation of a saving his dignity and prerogative; but no salvo would be allowed; the interdict was published, Divine service ceased through the kingdom, except in a very few places, where some clergymen were found honest and bold enough to preach against the Pope’s proceedings. John, in revenge, fleeced the clergy in a most horrible manner; and, what is yet more surprising, did not desist from oppressing the laity. However, as to the points in contest, he was not obstinate; he offered more than once to submit; but Innocent had more extensive views. There was no remission without he refunded to the churchmen every farthing he had extorted from them, a thing absolutely out of his power. Then followed, after successive delays calculated to shew that the holy father would give his undutiful son time to repent, a sentence of excommunication by name, a bull absolving his subjects from their oath of allegiance, and commanding all persons to avoid his company; and, lastly, a sentence of deposition, and a grant of all his dominions to the king of France, who had been invited also by John’s subjects, whose patience had been by this time quite exhausted with his tyranny, and the suspension of the performance of Divine service.

Philip was very ready to execute this sentence, and assembled a numerous army. Randulf was sent, as the Pope’s legate, to see the sentence of deposition put in execution; but, in reality, with secret instructions of a very different nature; for it was by no means Innocent’s intention to give England to France, but to subject it to himself. John, terrified with the exaggerated account of Philip’s armament, and the disaffection of his subjects, submitted in every point before in contest, and in one new one, that no clergyman should be outlawed. But this was not sufficient to avert the danger from Philip, and his own disaffected barons. To make him sacred and invulnerable, he became a vassal to the Pope, resigned his kingdom to him by a formal charter, and received it again as a favour, under homage, and a yearly rent of a thousand marks.

In consideration of this submission, John was favoured in the point of indemnifying the clergy, which was what had so long retarded the accommodation. Innocent took the estimating this on himself, and having got all he wanted for the See of Rome, forgot his former clients the clergy, and was very moderate with his new vassal. However, the interdict was not removed, nor the king absolved from his excommunication, till Langton was put into possession; which when done, John was obliged to renew his homage, to swear to defend church and clergy against all their adversaries, and to make restitution; and then he was absolved. But there was one curious addition to this oath, which Langton, who was an Englishman, and a lover of liberty, certainly inserted of his own head, that he should restore the laws of the Confessor: For Innocent would never, we may be well assured, have allowed such privileges to his vassals. John, however, out of fear of Philip, being in an hurry to be absolved, made no objection; and indeed he had no reason to doubt the Pope would absolve him from his oath. But Langton and the nobles were resolved to keep him strictly to it. Soon after, while he was in France, his regents summoned a parliament, wherein the king’s peace was proclaimed, and the laws of Henry the First were revived. These were those he had sworn to restore, being in truth the Confessor’s, with a few additions and alterations by the Conqueror and Henry.

John, however, went on in his old courses, being now sure of the Pope’s protection, and indeed it was hard to charge him with a breach of Henry’s charter, of which, though copies had been lodged in every cathedral and great abbey in England, yet so carefully were they destroyed, that not one appeared. At length archbishop Langton furnished them with one, which had escaped the general calamity; and this the associated barons, who had determined to restrain John, and recover their liberties, made the basis of their demands, and swore to demand, and if refused, to vindicate with the sword, at a meeting they had at Edmundsbury under pretence of devotion. Accordingly, they waited on the king in a military dress, and made their demands; but he, seeing they were only a party among the nobles, and not imagining the rest were of the same sentiments, not only refused, but with haughtiness insisted they should renounce them, by giving under their hands and seals, that they would never make the like demand on him or his successors. But his eyes were opened when he found scarce two or three of those that were with him would comply. He had recourse to procrastination, and promised them satisfaction at the latter end of Easter. In the interim he exacted a new oath of allegiance from his subjects; a feeble precaution; for none refused it, or thought themselves precluded by that act of duty from vindicating their rights in what manner they best might. To secure the clergy, he gave them a charter, confirming their immunities, and the entire freedom of their elections; and yet a great multitude continued zealous for the liberty of the subject against him; but his main dependance was on religion. To render his person sacred, he assumed the cross, as if he intended for the holy war, and implored the protection of his Holiness, to whom the discontented barons also represented the justice of their pretensions. Innocent, in appearance, received them favourably, advised them to represent their hardships in a decent and humble manner to the king, in which case he would interpose in favour of all their just and reasonable petitions; but annulled their association, and forbad them to enter into any new one for the future.

The barons, who sent to the Pope rather out of respect than any expectation of favour, proceeded in the method they began. They and their vassals assembled in array, in such numbers as to compose a formidable army; and when they had particularly specified their demands, and were refused, they proceeded to attack him, by reducing his castles. Against himself, as being under the cross, they made no attempt. On this occasion, archbishop Langton, who was at the bottom of the whole confederacy, outwitted John; who, as they had disobeyed the Pope, was impatient to have them excommunicated, and this the Pope promised to do as soon as the foreign troops, which the king had brought over for his defence, had quitted the kingdom; but when they were gone, he broke his engagement, so that John, left defenceless, was obliged to appoint four nobles to treat with the revolted lords; and, upon conference, some points they had insisted on before being given up, the liberties of the nation were settled, as contained in the two charters of Magna Charta, and Charta de Foresta [388].

The manner of obtaining these charters, and the right the people have to the liberties contained in them, have been the subject of much controversy between the favourers of arbitrary power and the assertors of freedom; the one, contending that they were the fruits of rebellion, extorted by force and fraud, from a prince unable to resist, and therefore revocable by him or his successors; and the others, that they were the antient privileges of the nation, which John had, contrary to his coronation-oath, invaded, and which they therefore had a right to reclaim by arms. That they were obtained by force, is undoubted, and that John and many of his successors looked upon them, therefore, as of no validity, is as clear, even from the argument lord Coke brings for their great weight, their being confirmed above twenty times by act of parliament. To what purpose so many confirmations, if the kings had not thought them invalid, and had not, on occasions, broke through them; and were it as clear that they were not the antient rights of the people, it must be owned they were extorted by rebellion. But that they were no other than confirmations, appears very plainly from the short detail I have heretofore given of the constitution and spirit of the monarchy of the Saxons, and all other northern nations.

As to any new regulations introduced in them, as some there are, they are only precautions for the better securing those liberties the people were before entitled to, and it is a maxim of all laws, that he who has a right to a thing, hath a right to the means without which he cannot enjoy that thing.

The friends, therefore, to absolute power, sensible that the original constitution is against them, choose to look no farther back than the Conquest. Then, say they, the Saxon government and laws were extinguished, the English by the Conquest lost their rights, the foreigners had no title to English liberties, and the Conqueror and his son William acted as despotic monarchs. Therefore, their successors had the same right, and it was treason to think of controuling them. But how little foundation there is for this doctrine, may appear from what I observed on the reign of the Conqueror. He claimed to be king on the same footing as his predecessors; he confirmed the Saxon laws, and consequently both Saxons and foreigners, when settled in the kingdom, had a right to them. If he oppressed the English, that oppression did not extend to all; and to those it did, it was not exercised as upon conquered slaves, but as upon revolted rebels. But, for argument sake, to allow that the English became slaves, and that the foreign lords had no right to the Saxon privileges, both which are false, how came the king to be despotic sovereign over them? They were partly his own subjects, freemen, according to the feudal principles, who served him as volunteers, for he had no right to command their service in England; or volunteers from other princes dominions, and to say that freemen and their posterity became slaves, because they are so kind as to conquer a kingdom for their leader, is a most extraordinary paradox.

But William the Conqueror, in some instances, and his son in all, acted as despotic princes; therefore they had a right so to do. I answer, the triumvirs proscribed hundreds of the best Romans, therefore they had a right. It is as unsafe to argue from matter of fact to matter of right, as from matter of right to matter of fact. It is as absurd to say, Tarquin ruled absolutely, therefore the Romans were rightfully his slaves, as to say the Romans had a right to liberty under him, therefore they were free.

But it may be said, the people quietly submitted, and new rights may be acquired, and new laws made, by the tacit consent of prince and people, as well as by express legislation. I allow it where the consent is undoubtedly voluntary, and hath continued uninterrupted for a long space of time; and how voluntary this submission was, we may judge from the terms they made with Henry the First, before they suffered him to mount the throne. Besides, there are some points of liberty, essential to human nature, that cannot, either by express or tacit laws, be given up, such as the natural right that an innocent man has to his life, his personal liberty, and the guidance of his actions, provided they are lawful, when the public good doth not necessarily require a restraint. In short, never was there a worse cause, or worse defended; and this maxim was what influenced the conduct of the Stuarts, and precipitated that unhappy house to their ruin.

John, who entertained the same sentiments, had no resource to recover his lost rights, as he thought them, but the assistance of the Pope, and an army of foreigners. The first very cordially espoused his interest. He was provoked that he, who had humbled kings, should be controuled by petty lords, and that by these privileges he should be prevented from reaping that golden harvest he expected from England. He annulled the charters, commanded them to recede from them, and, on their disobedience, excommunicated them, first in general, and then, by name.

About the same time arrived an army of veteran foreigners, that came to assist John, who had, in imitation of the Conqueror, distributed to them the estates of the barons. With these and a few English lords, he took the field, and ravaged the country with a more than Turkish barbarity. The confederate barons saw the liberties they had contended for annulled, their lives and estates in the most imminent danger, and, in a fit of despair, invited Lewis, prince of France, to the crown, who, bringing over an army, saved them from immediate destruction. However, this strengthened John. It was not for any to stand neuter. Few chose to embark in an excommunicated party, and many, who saw slavery unavoidable, and nothing left but the choice of a master, preferred their countryman for a king to a foreigner. The loss of liberty now seemed certain, which ever prevailed; when the haughtiness of Lewis, and his want of confidence in the English noblemen who joined him, concurring with the death of John, and the innocence of his infant son, providentially preserved the freedom of England.