Part 30

197. Battle of Bouvines; Second Meeting of the Barons (1214).

John foolishly set out for the Continent, to fight the French at the same time that the English barons were preparing to bring him to terms. He was defeated in the decisive battle of Bouvines, in the north of France, and returned to England crestfallen (1214), and in no condition to resist demands at home. Late in the autumn the barons met in the abbey church of Bury St. Edmunds, in Suffolk, under their leader, Robert Fitz-Walter, of London. Advancing one by one up the church to the high altar, they solemnly swore that they would oblige John to grant the new charter, or they would declare war against him.

198. The King grants the Charter, 1215.

At Easter (1215) the same barons, attended by two thousand armed knights, met the King at Oxford and made known their demands. John tried to evade giving a direct answer. Seeing that was impossible, and finding that the people of London were on the side of the barons, he yielded and requested them to name the day and place for the ratification of the charter.

"Let the day be the 15th of June, the place Runnymede," was the reply. In accordance therewith, we read at the foot of the shriveled parchment preserved in the British Museum, "Given under our hand...in the meadow called Runnymede, between Windsor and Staines, on the 15th of June, in the seventeenth year of our reign."

Runnymede: about twenty miles southwest of London, on the south bank of the Thames, in Surrey.

199. Terms and Value of the Charter, 1215; England leads in Constitutional Government.

This memorable document was henceforth known as the Magna Carta, or the Great Charter,--a term used to emphatically distinguish it from all previous and partial charters.

Magna Carta: Carta is the spelling in the medieval Latin of this and the preceding charters. (See the Constitutional Documents in the Appendix, p. xxix.)

It stipulated that the following grievances should be redressed: First, those of the Church; secondly, those of the barons and their vassals or tenants; thirdly, those of citizens and tradesmen; fourthly, those of freemen and villeins or serfs (SS113, 150).

Such was the first agreement entered into between the King and all classes of his people. Of the sixty-three articles which constitute it, the greater part, owing to the changes of time, are now obsolete; but three possess imperishable value. These provide:

(1) That no free man shall be imprisoned or proceeded against except by his peers, or the law of the land. (2) That justice shall neither be sold, denied, nor delayed. (3) That all dues from the people to the King, unless otherwise distinctly specified, shall be imposed only with the conselt of the National Council (S144).

This last provision "converted the power of taxation into the shield of liberty."

Peers (from Latin pares): equals; this clause secures a fair and open trial. Sir J. Mackintosh's "History of England." This provision was dropped in the next reign (see W. Stubb's "Constitutional History of England"); but after the great civil war of the seventeenth century the principle it laid down was firmly reestablished.

Thus, for the first time, the interests of all classes were protected, and for the first time the English people appear in the constitutional history of the country as a united body. So highly was this charter esteemed, that in the course of the next two centuries it was confirmed no less than thirty-seven times; and the very day that Charles II entered London, after the civil wars of the seventeenth century, the House of Commons asked him to confirm it again (1660). Magna Carta was the first great step in that development of constitutional government in which England has taken the lead.

200. John's Efforts to break the Charter (1215).

But John had no sooner set his hand to this document than he determined to repudiate it. He hired bands of soldiers on the Continent to come to his aid. The charter had been obtained by armed revolt; for this reason the Pope opposed it. He suspended Archbishop Langton (S196), and threatened the barons with excommunication (S167), if they persisted in enforcing the provisions of the charter.

201. The Barons invite Louis of France to aid them (1215).

In their desperation,--for the King's hired foreign soldiers were now ravaging the country,--the barons dispatched a messenger to John's sworn enemy, Philip, King of France. They invited him to send over his son, Prince Louis, to free them from tyranny, and become ruler of the kingdom. He came with all speed, and soon made himself master of the southern counties.

202. King John's Death (1216).

John was the first sovereign who had styled himself, on his great seal, "King of England," thus formally claiming the actual ownership of the realm. He was now to find that the sovereign who has no place in his subjects' hearts has small hold of their possessions.

The late Professor E. A. Freeman, in his "Norman Conquest," I, 85, note, says that though Richard Coeur de Lion had used this title in issuing charters, yet John was the first king who put this inscription on the great seal.

The rest of his ignominious reign was spent in war against the barons and Prince Louis of France. "They have placed twenty-five kings over me!" he shouted, in his fury, referring to the twenty-five leading men who had been appointed to see that the Great Charter did not become a dead letter. But the twenty-five did their duty, and the war was on.

In the midst of it John suddenly died. The old record said of him--and said rightly--that he was "a knight without truth, a king without justice, a Christian without faith." The Church returned good for evil, and permitted him to be buried in front of the high altar of Worcester cathedral.

The late Professor W. Stubbs, of Oxford, says, in his "Early Plantagenets," p. 152: "John ended thus a life of ignominy in which he has no rival in the whole long list of our sovereigns....He was in every way the worst of the whole list: the most vicious, the most profane, the most tyrannical, the most false, the most short-sighted, the most unscrupulous." A more recent writer (Professor Charles Oman, of the University of Oxford), says of John, "No man had a good word to say for him...; he was loathed by every one who knew him."

203. Summary.

John's reign may be regarded as a turning point in English history.

1. Through the loss of Normandy, the Norman nobility found it for their interest to make the welfare of England and of the English race one with their own. Thus the two peoples became more and more united, until finally all differences ceased.