The Leading Facts of English History Part 16

185. Richard taken Prisoner; his Ransom (1194).

On his way home the King fell into the hands of the German Emperor, who held him captive. His brother John (S177), who had remained in England, plotted with Philip of France to keep Richard in prison while he got possession of the throne. It is not certainly known how the news of Richard's captivity reached England. One account relates that it was carried by Blondel, a minstrel who had accompanied the King to Palestine. He, it is said, wandered through Germany in search of his master, singing a song, which he and Richard had composed together, at every castle he came to. One day, as he was thus singing at the foot of a tower, he heard the well-known voice of the King take up the next verse in reply.

Finally, Richard regained his liberty (1194), but to do it he had to raise an enormous ransom. Every Englishman, it was said, was obliged to give a fourth of his personal property, and the priests were forced to strip the churches of their jewels and silver plate.

When the King of France heard that the ransom money had at length been raised, he wrote to John, telling him that his brother was free.

"Look out for yourself," said he; "the devil has broken loose."

Richard generously pardoned his treacherous brother; and when the King was killed in a war in France (1199) John gained the throne he coveted, but gained it only to disgrace it.

186. Purpose of the Crusades.

Up to the time of the Crusades, the English, when they entered upon Continental wars, had been actuated either by ambition for military glory or desire for conquest. But they undertook the Crusades from motives of religious enthusiasm.

Those who engaged in them fought for an idea. They considered themselves soldiers of the cross. Moved by this feeling, "all Christian believers seemed redy to precipitate themselves in one united body upon Asia" (S182). Thus the Crusades were "the first European event."[1] They gave men something n.o.ble to battle for, not only outside their country, but outside their own selfish interests.

[1] Guizot's "History of Civilization."

Richard, as we have seen, was the first English King who took part in them. Before that period England had stood aloof,--"a world by itself." The country was engaged in its own affairs or in its contests with France. Richard's expedition to the Holy Land brought England into the main current of history, so that it was now moved by the same feeling which animated the Continent.

187. The Results of the Crusades: Educational, Social, Political.

From a purely military point of view, the Crusades ended in disastrous failure, for they left the Mohammedans in absolute possession of the Holy Land. Although this is the twentieth century since the birth of Christ, the Mohammedans still continue in that possession. But in spite of their failure these wars brought great good to England. In many respects the civilization of the East was far in advance of the West. One result of the Crusades was to open the eyes of Europe to this fact. When Richard and his followers set out, they looked upon the Mohammedans as barbarians; before they returned, many were ready to acknowledge that the barbarians were chiefly among themselves.

At that time England had few Latin and no Greek scholars. The Saracens or Mohammedans, however, had long been familiar with the cla.s.sics, and had translated them into their own tongue. Not only did England gain its first knowledge of the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle from Mohammedan teachers, but it also received from them the elements of arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and astronomy.

This new knowledge gave a great impulse to education, and had a most important influence on the growth of the universities of Cambridge and Oxford, though these inst.i.tutions did not become prominent until more than a century later.

Had these been the only results, they would still, perhaps, have been worth all the blood and treasure spent by the crusaders in their vain attempts to recover the permanent possession of the sepulcher of Christ; but these were by no means all. The Crusades brought about a social and political revolution. They conferred benefits and removed evils. When they began, the greater part of the inhabitants of western Europe, including England, were chained to the soil (S150).

They had neither freedom, property, nor knowledge.

There were in fact but three cla.s.ses, who really deserved the name of citizens and freemen; these were the churchmen (comprising the clergy, monks, and other ecclesiastics), the n.o.bles, and the inhabitants of certain favored towns. The effect of the Crusades was to increase the number of this last cla.s.s. We have seen that Richard was compelled, by his need of money, to grant charters conferring local self-government on many towns (SS182, 183). For a similar reason the great n.o.bles often granted the same powers to towns which they controlled. The result was that their immense estates were broken up in some measure. It was from this period, says the historian Gibbon, that the common people (living in these chartered towns) began to acquire political rights, and, what is more, to defend them.

188. Summary.

We may say in closing that the central fact in Richard's reign was his embarking in the Crusades. From them, directly or indirectly, England gained two important advantages: first, a greater degree of political liberty, especially in the case of the towns; secondly, a new intellectual and educational impulse.

John--1199-1216

189. John Lackland; the King's Quarrels.

When Henry II in dividing his realm left his youngest son, John, dependent on the generousity of his brothers, he jestingly gave him the surname of "Lackland" (S171). The nickname continued to cling to him even after he had become King of England and had also secured Normandy and several adjacent provinces in France.

The reign of the new King was taken up mainly with three momentous quarrels: first, with France; next, with the Pope; lastly, with the barons. By his quarrel with France he lost Normandy and the greater part of the adjoining provinces, thus becoming in a new sense John Lackland. By his quarrel with the Pope he was humbled to the earth.

By his quarrel with the barons he was forced to grant England the Great Charter.

190. Murder of Prince Arthur.

Shortly after John's accession the n.o.bles occupying a part of the English possessions in France expressed their desire that John's nephew, Arthur, a boy of twelve, should become their ruler. John refused to grant their request.

War, ensued, and Arthur fell into the hands of his uncle John, who imprisoned him in the castle of Rouen, the capital of Normandy. A number of those who had been captured with the young prince were starved to death in the dungeons of the same castle, and not long after Arthur himself mysteriously disappeared. Shakespeare represents John as ordering the keeper of the castle to put out the lad's eyes, and then tells us that he was killed in an attempt to escape.[1] The general belief, however, was that the King murdered him.

[1] Shakespeare's "King John," Act IV, scenes i and iii.

191. John's Loss of Normandy (1204).

Philip, King of France, accused John of the crime, and ordered him as Duke of Normandy, and hence as his feudal dependant (S86), to appear at Paris for trial. John refused. The court met, declared him a traitor, and sentenced him to forfeit all his lands on the Continent.

John's late brother, Richard Coeur de Lion (S185), had built a famous stronghold on the Seine to hold Rouen and Normandy. He named it "Saucy Castle." King Philip vowed in Richard's lifetime that he would make himself master of it. "I would take it," said the French King, "were its walls of iron." "I would hold it," retorted Richard, "were its walls of b.u.t.ter." Richard made his word good, and kept the castle as long as he lived; but his successor, John, was of poorer and meaner stuff. He left his Norman n.o.bles to carry on the war against Philip as best they could. At last, after much territory had been lost, the English King made an attempt to regain it. But it was too late, and "Saucy Castle" fell. Then the end speedily came. Philip seized all Normandy and followed up the victory by depriving John of his entire possessions north of the river Loire. (See map facing p. 84.)

192. Good Results of the Loss of Normandy.

Thus after a union of nearly a hundred and forty years Normandy was finally separated from England (S108). From that time the Norman n.o.bles were compelled to choose between the island of England and the Continent for their home. Before that time the Norman's contempt for the Saxon was so great, that his most indignant exclamation was, "Do you take me for an Englishman?"

Now, however, shut in by the sea, with the people he had hitherto oppressed and despised, the Norman came to regard England as his country, and Englishmen as his countrymen. Thus the two races, who were closely akin to each other in their origin (S126), found at last that they had common interests and common enemies,[1] and henceforth they made the welfare of England their main thought.

[1] Macaulay's "England"; also W. Stubb's "Early Plantagenets,"

p. 136.

193. The King's Despotism.

Hitherto our sympathies have been mainly with the kings. We have watched them struggling against the lawless n.o.bles (S173), and every gain which they have made in power we have felt was so much won for the cause of good government. But we are coming to a period when our sympathies will be the other way. Henceforth the welfare of the nation will depend largely on the resistence of these very barons to the despotic encroachments of the Crown.[2]

[2] Ransome's "Const.i.tutional History of England."

194. Quarrel of the King with the Church (1208).

Shortly after his defeat in France (S191), John entered upon his second quarrel. Pope Innocent III had commanded a delegation of the monks of Canterbury to choose Stephen Langton archbishop in place of a person whom the King had compelled them to elect. When the news reached John, he forbade Langton's landing in England, although it was his native country.

The Pope forthwith declared the kingdom under an interdict, or suspension of religious services. For two years the churches were hung in mourning, the bells ceased to ring, the doors were shut fast.

For two years the priests denied the sacraments to the living and funeral prayers for the dead. At the end of that time the Pope, by a bull of excommunication (S167), cut off the King as a withered branch from the Church. John laughed at the interdict, and met the decree of excommunication with such cruel treatment of the priests that they fled terrified from the lnd.

The Pope now took a third and final step; he deposed John and ordered Philip, King of France, to seize the English Crown. Then John, knowing that he stood alone, made a virtue of necessity. He knelt at the feet of the Pope's legate, or representative, accepted Stephen Langton as Archbishop of Canterbury, and promised to pay a yearly tax to Rome of one thousand marks (about $64,000 in modern money) for permission to keep his crown. The Pope was satisfied with the victory he had gained over his ign.o.ble foe, and peace was made.

195. The Great Charter.

But peace in one direction did not mean peace in all. John's tyranny, brutality, and disregard of his subjects' welfare had gone too far.

He had refused the Church the right to fill its offices and enjoy its revenues. He had extorted exhorbitant sums from the barons. He had violated the charters of London and other cities. He had compelled merchants to pay large sums for the privilege of carrying on their business unmolested. He had imprisoned men on false or frivolous charges, and refused to bring them to trial. He had unjustly claimed heavy sums from villeins, or farm laborers (S113), and other poor men; and when they could not pay, had seized their carts and tools, thus depriving them of their means of livelihood.

Those who had suffered these and greater wrongs were determined to have reformation, and to have it in the form of a written charter or pledge bearing the King's seal. Stephen Langton, the new archbishop, was likewise determined. He no sooner landed in England than he demanded of the King that he should swear to observe the laws of Edward the Confessor (S65), a phrase[1] in which the whole of the national liberties was summed up.

[1] Not necessarily the laws made by that King, but rather the customs and rights enjoyed by the people during his reign.

196. Preliminary Meeting at St. Albans (1213).

In the summer (1213) a council was held at St. Albans, near London, composed of representatives from all parts of the kingdom. It was the first a.s.sembly of the kind on record. It convened to consider what claims should be made on the King in the interest of the n.o.bles, the clergy, and the people at large. A few weeks later they met again, at St. Paul's in London.

The deliberations of the a.s.sembly took shape probably under Archbishop Langton's guiding hand. He had obtained a copy of the charter granted by Henry I (S135). This was used as a model for drawing up a new one of similar character, but in every respect fuller and stronger in its provisions.