But the shameless ingenuity of the king’s temper was seen in his resolve to find in his very humiliation a new source of strength.  If he yielded to the Church he had no mind to yield to the rest of his foes; it was indeed in the Pope who had defeated him that he saw the means of baffling their efforts.  It was Rome that formed the link between the varied elements of hostility which combined against him.  It was Rome that gave its sanction to Philip’s ambition and roused the hopes of Scotch and Welsh, Rome that called the clergy to independence, and nerved the barons to resistance.  To detach Innocent by submission from the league which hemmed him in on every side was the least part of John’s purpose.  He resolved to make Rome his ally, to turn its spiritual thunders on his foes, to use it in breaking up the confederacy it had formed, in crushing the baronage, in oppressing the clergy, in paralyzing—­as Rome only could paralyze—­the energy of the Primate.  That greater issues even than these were involved in John’s rapid change of policy time was to show; but there is no need to credit the king with the foresight that would have discerned them.  His quick versatile temper saw no doubt little save the momentary gain.  But that gain was immense.  Nor was the price as hard to pay as it seems to modern eyes.  The Pope stood too high above earthly monarchs, his claims, at least as Innocent conceived and expressed them, were too spiritual, too remote from the immediate business and interests of the day, to make the owning of his suzerainty any very practical burthen.  John could recall a time when his father was willing to own the same subjection as that which he was about to take on himself.  He could recall the parallel allegiance which his brother had pledged to the Emperor.  Shame indeed there must be in any loss of independence, but in this less than any, and with Rome the shame of submission had already been incurred.  But whatever were the king’s thoughts his act was decisive.  On the 15th of May 1213 he knelt before the legate Pandulf, surrendered his kingdom to the Roman See, took it back again as a tributary vassal, swore fealty and did liege homage to the Pope.

[Sidenote:  Its Results]

In after times men believed that England thrilled at the news with a sense of national shame such as she had never felt before.  “He has become the Pope’s man” the whole country was said to have murmured; “he has forfeited the very name of king; from a free man he has degraded himself into a serf.”  But this was the belief of a time still to come when the rapid growth of national feeling which this step and its issues did more than anything to foster made men look back on the scene between John and Pandulf as a national dishonour.  We see little trace of such a feeling in the contemporary accounts of the time.  All seem rather to have regarded it as a complete settlement of the difficulties in which king and kingdom were involved.  As a