War, ensued, and Arthur fell into the hands of his uncle John, who imprisoned him in the castle of Rouen, the capital of Normandy.  A number of those who had been captured with the young prince were starved to death in the dungeons of the same castle, and not long after Arthur himself mysteriously disappeared.  Shakespeare represents John as ordering the keeper of the castle to put out the lad’s eyes, and then tells us that he was killed in an attempt to escape.[1] The general belief, however, was that the King murdered him.

[1] Shakespeare’s “King John,” Act IV, scenes i and iii.

191.  John’s Loss of Normandy (1204).

Philip, King of France, accused John of the crime, and ordered him as Duke of Normandy, and hence as his feudal dependant (S86), to appear at Paris for trial.  John refused.  The court met, declared him a traitor, and sentenced him to forfeit all his lands on the Continent.

John’s late brother, Richard Coeur de Lion (S185), had built a famous stronghold on the Seine to hold Rouen and Normandy.  He named it “Saucy Castle.”  King Philip vowed in Richard’s lifetime that he would make himself master of it.  “I would take it,” said the French King, “were its walls of iron.”  “I would hold it,” retorted Richard, “were its walls of butter.”  Richard made his word good, and kept the castle as long as he lived; but his successor, John, was of poorer and meaner stuff.  He left his Norman nobles to carry on the war against Philip as best they could.  At last, after much territory had been lost, the English King made an attempt to regain it.  But it was too late, and “Saucy Castle” fell.  Then the end speedily came.  Philip seized all Normandy and followed up the victory by depriving John of his entire possessions north of the river Loire. (See map facing p. 84.)

192.  Good Results of the Loss of Normandy.

Thus after a union of nearly a hundred and forty years Normandy was finally separated from England (S108).  From that time the Norman nobles were compelled to choose between the island of England and the Continent for their home.  Before that time the Norman’s contempt for the Saxon was so great, that his most indignant exclamation was, “Do you take me for an Englishman?”

Now, however, shut in by the sea, with the people he had hitherto oppressed and despised, the Norman came to regard England as his country, and Englishmen as his countrymen.  Thus the two races, who were closely akin to each other in their origin (S126), found at last that they had common interests and common enemies,[1] and henceforth they made the welfare of England their main thought.

[1] Macaulay’s “England”; also W. Stubb’s “Early Plantagenets,” p. 136.

193.  The King’s Despotism.

Hitherto our sympathies have been mainly with the kings.  We have watched them struggling against the lawless nobles (S173), and every gain which they have made in power we have felt was so much won for the cause of good government.  But we are coming to a period when our sympathies will be the other way.  Henceforth the welfare of the nation will depend largely on the resistence of these very barons to the despotic encroachments of the Crown.[2]