Canterbury, to preserve the liberties of the Church, and the laws of the land.[1]
In the year 1200, John began his career of tyranny by seizing all the possessions of the archbishop of York.[2] The archbishop excommunicated the officers who had seized his manors. John was enraged at this, but still more enraged because the archbishop had forbid the collection of a plough-tax in his diocese.
In the year 1203, the shameless vices of the king, and the loss of his castles in Normandy, caused the barons who were with him in France to forsake the court.[3] He then returned to England, and exacted of the barons a seventh part of their goods: he committed also all manner of rapine by violence against the Church and convents. [4]
John had shown himself to be vicious, sensual, violent, false, tyrannical, and a violator of his coronation oath by infractions of the liberties of the Church and of the laws of the land. But hitherto the authority and statesmanship of Archbishop Hubert had in some degree restrained him. In 1205 the archbishop died; and on hearing of his death, John said exultingly, "Now for the first time I am king of England."[5]
From this date opens a new chapter in John's history.
In order to force his favourite, John de Gray, into the see of Canterbury, he overbore the freedom of the electors.
The pope annulled the election and chose Stephen Langton, who was already cardinal priest of St. Chrysogenus. This was in the year 1207. He was elected by the monks, and consecrated in Rome. John in his fury, refused to receive the archbishop, and drove the monks of Canterbury out of England. The pope, after sending many envoys and writing many letters to the king without effect, threatened to lay an interdict upon the kingdom. John persisted in his obstinacy, and the interdict was promulgated on March 23, 1208. He then confiscated the property of the bishops, abbots, priors, and clergy; and seized all their goods for his own use.[6] He inflicted all manner of personal indignities and cruelties upon ecclesiastics. Being conscious that his enormities had alienated the barons from him, he endeavoured to compel them to renew their homage. His despotism became minutely vexatious. He forbade the taking of birds throughout England; and commanded the hedges and ditches which protected the harvest-lands to be destroyed.[7] He exacted homage of all freeholders, even from boys of twelve years old; and compelled, for that purpose, the Welsh to come to Woodstock. He then turned his exactions and cruelties, which are well known, against the Jews, both men and women. In the year 1210, he exacted by violence, vellent nollent, a hundred thousand pounds sterling from the clergy, which Matthew Paris calls exactio nefaria. At the same time, he starved to death the wife and son of one of his nobles.[8] The rapine and violence of John on every class of his people steadily growing more intolerable, the pope on their appeal absolved his subjects from their allegiance, and forbade them to consort with him in mensa, consilio et colioquio. Geoffrey of Norwich, a judge of the exchequer, therefore resigned his office. He was thrown into prison and laden with a cope of lead, under which he soon died.[9] Many nobles, prelates, and others, fled from England and died in exile. By John's command twenty-eight youths, surrendered by the Welsh as hostages, were hanged at Nottingham before he would take his food. He was then warned of the defection of his barons, from whom, by terror, he extorted sons, nephews, and kinsmen as hostages. I have simply taken the chief points of the narrative of Matthew Paris. But it is impossible to give an adequate idea of the misery of the people of England under the tyranny of John. A perpetual cry went up from the face of the whole land. It is said that there was hardly a noble family on which John had not inflicted the indelible stain of some moral outrage. I have briefly brought these things together in order to show that it was in the cause of the whole people that the pope had throughout exerted his authority. He protected their liberties and their laws. The whole power of Innocent had been used to restrain the violence of the king. When, therefore, nothing availed, the archbishop, with the bishops of London and Ely, laid before the pope John's manifold rebellions and enormities, "multimodas rebelliones et enormitates." The pope then, with the unanimous assent of the English people, save only the partisans of
