THE SIGNING OF THE "GREAT CHARTER" AT RUNNYMEDE.
HISTORIC SKETCHES.—I.
MAGNA CHARTA.
It was high time something should be done when the prelates and barons of England made King John sign the Great Charter. The land had had no rest, the people no security, since the day when Duke William overthrew King Harold at Hastings, in October, 1066. If we take a glance at the history of the hundred and fifty years immediately succeeding the Conquest, we shall find it a record of many kinds of violence, an account of one perpetual striving which should be the greater, and it shows incidentally how much less than the whole world a man was willing to accept in exchange for his soul. Brother had striven with brother, sons with their fathers, for the throne. Kings had striven with prelates, barons with priests, for the mastery; baron had waged war on neighbouring baron on account of some private quarrel; even the religious houses were divided against themselves; and "the people"—that is to say, all those who were not of the so-called noble class—had been fearfully ill-used. In spite of the spirit of armed religion, as embodied in the institution of chivalry—in spite of the efforts of great and good men to procure some recognition of the law which bids us do unto others as we would have them do unto us, the grossest tyranny prevailed. The weakest went to the wall, and of the rules it might well be said—
"The good old rule
Sufficeth them—the simple plan—
That they should take who have the power,
And they should keep who can."
Under such circumstances, it is not very wonderful if we find that the position of all classes beneath the highest, and notably the class which furnished labourers, was perfectly intolerable. The king oppressed the barons, the barons fought among themselves and oppressed their weaker brethren, the lesser barons oppressed the small freeholders, and the small freeholders solaced themselves with the thraldom in which they kept the labourers who depended on them for a living. Sometimes things were better, sometimes worse; but at all times, as far as the workmen were concerned, bad was best. "Christ and his saints slept," said the poor people in the reign of Stephen, 1135-1154. In no other way could they account for their grievous condition. "You might as well have tilled the sea" as the land, says the Anglo-Saxon chronicler, for when the husbandman had spent his labour and his earnings so as to induce the earth to bring forth her increase, lawless men swooped down upon the crop, and as often as not slew the helpless owner of it, and drove his family into slavery. Every man who was strong enough built a castle, forcing the people to work at the stronghold which was to overawe them; and he paid them for neither time nor trouble. "They filled the land full of castles"—there were eleven hundred in England in Stephen's reign, when the population was under two millions—"they greatly oppressed the wretched people by making them work at these castles, and when the castles were finished they filled them with devils and evil men." So writes the chronicler.
At times the Church lifted her voice to warn, to exhort, and to threaten; and now and again, in the most solemn manner, put the most notorious evil-doers out of the communion of Christian men; but in spite of the superstitious fears, which were general, respecting the power of the priesthood, the Church was nearly powerless to stop the universal rapine, until she resorted to the bold expedient of putting Christianity under arms. This she did by founding, or rather by moulding on her own plan, the institution of chivalry. She enlisted under the banner of the Cross the choicest and most generous of the warlike spirits, and having sworn them by word and deed, in every way, "to break the heathen and uphold the Christ," she sent them forth against the wolves who were making much havoc in her sheepfold. Murderers, robbers, violators, scoundrels of all sorts, began now to count the cost of their actions, and then they hesitated about repeating them, for they found they had to lay their account with cracked skulls and slashed
