CHAPTER VIII.

REIGN OF JOHN.

[Sidenote:  A.D. 1199]

We are now arrived at one of the most memorable periods in the English story, whether we consider the astonishing revolutions which were then wrought, the calamities in which both the prince and people were involved, or the happy consequences which, arising from the midst of those calamities, have constituted the glory and prosperity of England for so many years.  We shall see a throne founded in arms, and augmented by the successive policy of five able princes, at once shaken to its foundations:  first made tributary by the arts of a foreign power; then limited, and almost overturned, by the violence of its subjects.  We shall see a king, to reduce his people to obedience, draw into his territories a tumultuary foreign army, and destroy his country instead of establishing his government.  We shall behold the people, grown desperate, call in another foreign army, with a foreign prince at its head, and throw away that liberty which they had sacrificed everything to preserve.  We shall see the arms of this prince successful against an established king in the vigor of his years, ebbing in the full tide of their prosperity, and yielding to an infant:  after this, peace and order and liberty restored, the foreign force and foreign title purged off, and all things settled as happily as beyond all hope.

Richard dying without lawful issue, the succession to his dominions again became dubious.  They consisted of various territories, governed by various rules of descent, and all of them uncertain.  There were two competitors:  the first was Prince John, youngest son of Henry the Second; the other was Arthur, son of Constance of Bretagne, by Geoffrey, the third son of that monarch.  If the right of consanguinity were only considered, the title of John to the whole succession had been indubitable.  If the right of representation had then prevailed, which now universally prevails, Arthur, as standing in the place of his father, Geoffrey, had a solid claim.  About Brittany there was no dispute.  Anjou, Poitou, Touraine, and Guienne declared in favor of Arthur, on the principle of representation.  Normandy was entirely for John.  In England the point of law had never been entirely settled, but it seemed rather inclined to the side of consanguinity.  Therefore in England, where this point was dubious at best, the claim of Arthur, an infant and a stranger, had little force against the pretensions of John, declared heir by the will of the late king, supported by his armies, possessed of his treasures, and at the head of a powerful party.  He secured in his interests Hubert, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Glanville, the chief justiciary, and by them the body of the ecclesiastics and the law.  It is remarkable, also, that he paid court to the cities and boroughs, which is the first instance of that policy:  but several of these communities