[2] Ransome’s “Constitutional History of England.”

194.  Quarrel of the King with the Church (1208).

Shortly after his defeat in France (S191), John entered upon his second quarrel.  Pope Innocent III had commanded a delegation of the monks of Canterbury to choose Stephen Langton archbishop in place of a person whom the King had compelled them to elect.  When the news reached John, he forbade Langton’s landing in England, although it was his native country.

The Pope forthwith declared the kingdom under an interdict, or suspension of religious services.  For two years the churches were hung in mourning, the bells ceased to ring, the doors were shut fast.  For two years the priests denied the sacraments to the living and funeral prayers for the dead.  At the end of that time the Pope, by a bull of excommunication (S167), cut off the King as a withered branch from the Church.  John laughed at the interdict, and met the decree of excommunication with such cruel treatment of the priests that they fled terrified from the lnd.

The Pope now took a third and final step; he deposed John and ordered Philip, King of France, to seize the English Crown.  Then John, knowing that he stood alone, made a virtue of necessity.  He knelt at the feet of the Pope’s legate, or representative, accepted Stephen Langton as Archbishop of Canterbury, and promised to pay a yearly tax to Rome of one thousand marks (about $64,000 in modern money) for permission to keep his crown.  The Pope was satisfied with the victory he had gained over his ignoble foe, and peace was made.

195.  The Great Charter.

But peace in one direction did not mean peace in all.  John’s tyranny, brutality, and disregard of his subjects’ welfare had gone too far.  He had refused the Church the right to fill its offices and enjoy its revenues.  He had extorted exhorbitant sums from the barons.  He had violated the charters of London and other cities.  He had compelled merchants to pay large sums for the privilege of carrying on their business unmolested.  He had imprisoned men on false or frivolous charges, and refused to bring them to trial.  He had unjustly claimed heavy sums from villeins, or farm laborers (S113), and other poor men; and when they could not pay, had seized their carts and tools, thus depriving them of their means of livelihood.

Those who had suffered these and greater wrongs were determined to have reformation, and to have it in the form of a written charter or pledge bearing the King’s seal.  Stephen Langton, the new archbishop, was likewise determined.  He no sooner landed in England than he demanded of the King that he should swear to observe the laws of Edward the Confessor (S65), a phrase[1] in which the whole of the national liberties was summed up.

[1] Not necessarily the laws made by that King, but rather the customs and rights enjoyed by the people during his reign.