bodies in this world as well as with a solemn promise of eternal damnation in the next.
Henry II mended matters a bit when he came to the throne in 1154, and by persevering in a wise policy strove to reduce to something like order the chaos into which society had fallen; but during the crusade which was led by Richard I. in 1190, and especially during the king's captivity in Austria, selfishness and wickedness in high places at home found scope for exercise, and law became silent amid tho din of arms. From the Lion-Hearted himself, peer and commoner were content to endure much; they saw in the fearless, generous, though Normanly cruel King, qualities which commanded their affections if not their judgments, and they bore with something like satisfaction the continuous and heavy demands which he made upon their blood and treasure. But the Lion being dead was succeeded by one who had played the traitor against him during his lifetime, who had all the ferocity and all the cruelty of his brother without one of his noble qualities, and who was already known to the people by the utter depravity of his life. Here is his portrait, drawn by one of our ablest historians: "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 one, nor excited esteem in tho other." Nor was this all. The man was the servant of a licentiousness which recognised no bounds. There was scarcely one family, even among the nobles, that did not smart under a keen sense of that injury which no man pardons to another. The sin for which Lucretia suffered and which drove the kings from Rome, the sin from the taint of which Virginius saved his daughter by killing her;—that sin sat heavily on John's soul, and stirred to their lowest depths tho hearts of all England against him.
From such an one the nation would endure nothing tamely, not even those acts which former kings had done, and which by prescription had almost obtained the semblance of law. The barons were utterly enraged, the clergy were fixedly hostile, and the people were suffering to that degree at which they sometimes turn and teach their wrongers "in some wild hour how much the wretched dare." The king was quite unable to ride on the whirlwind he had brought about him, and everything was ready, everybody was prepared, for a revolution. But one thing was wanting to make the revolution successful. There was abundance of muscle, enough and to spare of disposition to kick against the tyrant, but there was not any one to gather the headstrong passions into a focus whence they might act with effect upon the object of their wrath. The barons and those under them—the wrongs the barons suffered at the king's hands taught them sympathy with those who whilom suffered wrong at their own—represented brute force as the untamed elephant represents it; they lacked the skilful guide who might gather up their strength and lead it to the goal they wished to attain. They wanted Geist.*
Before we ascertain whence Geist came, and the manner in which it worked, let us see rather more particularly what it was the barons and the people suffered that was so intolerable.
When the Conqueror obtained possession of the island, A.D. 1066, he gave the land to be divided among his followers as a reward for their services. The only condition he imposed upon them—a very necessary one to a prince who was only in military possession of the country—was, that whenever summoned they should attend him with so many men-at-arms, archers, etc., according to the extent of their fees or holdings, for six weeks at their own expense. This was the only strictly feudal obligation; but custom added a number of other obligations, which, though smaller, were more galling. If a baron died, his heir had to pay a sum of money by way of "relief," as it was called, or a fee to induce the king to accept him in his father's stead; and if the heir were under age, the king had the wardship of him, an office which enabled the king to put into his own treasure the difference between the youth's income and the cost of his keep and education, for though the situation was really one of trust, practically it was made the means of profitto the trustee. If the ward were a woman, the warder could marry her to whom he pleased. For the purpose of making the king's eldest son a knight, and for providing a dower for his eldest daughter, custom required that all the king's tenants should subscribe; and when the king went on a journey through any part of the country, his purveyors were in the habit of taking for the royal use, attle, provisions, horses, carts, and whatever else might be wanted. Though as a matter of prudence the feudal prince summoned the grand council of all his tenants if he wanted their advice, he was under no legal obligation to summon them; and they might not meet unless he did so. While it was not supposed that a feudal prince could want money, seeing he had large demesne lands specially reserved to him, there was not any law forbidding him either to ask for it or to take it from the tenants.
Now it is easy to see that all the above-named institutions were liable to great abuse; and as a matter of fact they were abused to an unbearable extent. Reliefs, wardship, purveyance, the expensive military attendance, or the money commutation for it—all were made the means of screwing money or money's worth out of the people, and the Church, which held a great proportion of the land in the kingdom, was subject to spoliation as well as the lay tenants. All were tarred with the same brush. The sacred trust of guarding the infant orphan was sold for a fixed sum, and the purchaser of the trust got all he could for his money out of the ward's estate; men bought the right to marry heiresses who were wards of the king, and the right was sold to the highest bidder, almost without reference to personal qualifications.
But this was not all. John gave that worst sign of an evil government—the sale of justice. Henry II. had sold decrees, but the nuisance culminated under John. On the roll of the Exchequer are numerous entries of gifts, sometimes of money, sometimes of goods, in consideration of the lung's influence to get a verdict. The judges also took bribes, and that in cases where the Crown was concerned.
Lastly, there was the great grievance of tho forest laws, those remote ancestors of our existing game laws. These laws, made by the cruel Conqueror, who, says a Norman monk, "loved the tall stags as if he had been their father," made it a felony, punishable with loss of limb for an unauthorised person to be found in a forest, and by the same law it was made a capital offence to kill a stag.
If all these things were done in the green tree, what could have been done in the dry? If the king so acted towards the barons, prelates, abbots, and other chief tenants, how did these in their turn behave towards those under them? Badly, it is to be feared, though they made the best recompense they could, under the dictation of Geist, by including them with themselves in the charter of liberties. With the wretched labourers, the villeins—the poor slaves who "knew not in the evening what they were to do in the morning, but they were bound to do whatever they were commanded," who were liable to beating and imprisonment at the will of their lord, who were incapable of acquiring property, or of giving freedom to their children—we have not now anything to do. They, alas! benefited but slightly by Magna Charta; their time of emancipation had not yet come.
Let us turn now to look at what Geist did to remedy, as regarded freemen, the wrongs from which they suffered.
Stephen de Langton was an Englishman who had been promoted to the see of Canterbury by the Pope, in defiance and in spite of the king. Before he gave John absolution, and took off the ban under which England had lain for tho six years prior to 1213, he made the penitent swear to abolish all unjust practices, to do right, and to govern according to law; but a short time afterwards, the barons having refused to follow the king in an expedition to France, John turned his hired troops loose on the barons' lands, and burned and pillaged right and left. Langton met him at Northampton, and again at Nottingham, and by threatening to excommunicate every one of his followers, compelled him to desist. But Geist, in the shape of the Primate, knew that other means must be taken to prevent a repetition of violence. At a meeting of the barons in St. Paul's Cathedral, London, Langton said he had discovered a charter of liberties which Henry I. had granted when he was desirous of winning the support of the English against his brother Robert. He read the charter to them, and suggested
* The meaning of the word Geist is hardly to be rendered by any single equivalent in our language. It embodies the meaning of Brain, Sense, Discretion, Intelligence, and Will.
