The Eighteen Christian Centuries

Long before this, in 1204, Philip Augustus had found little difficulty in tearing the continental possessions of the English crown, except Guienne, from the trembling hands of John. The possession of Normandy had already made France a maritime power; and now, by the acquisition of the Narbonnais and Maguelonne from Raymond the Seventh, she not only extended her limits to the Mediterranean, but, by the extinction of two such vassals as the Count of Toulouse and the Duke of Normandy, incalculably strengthened the royal crown. Extinguished, indeed, was the power of Toulouse; for by the same treaty the unfortunate Raymond bought his peace with Rome by bestowing the county of Venaissin and half of Avignon on the Holy See. These sacrifices relieved him from the sentence of excommunication, and made him the best-loved son of the Church, and the poorest prince in Christendom.

While monarchy was making such strides in France, a counterbalancing power was formed in England by the combination of the nobility and the rise of the House of Commons. The story of Magna Charta is so well known that it will be sufficient to recall some of its principal incidents, which could not with propriety be omitted in an account of the important events of the thirteenth century. No event, indeed, of equal importance occurred in any other country of Europe. However more startling a crusade or a victory might be at the time, the results of no single incident have ever been so enduring or so wide-spread as those of the meeting of the barons at Runnymede and the summoning of the burgesses to Parliament.

The whole reign of John (1199-1216) is a tale of wickedness and degradation. Richard of the Lion-Heart had been cruel and unprincipled; but the sharpness of his sword threw a sort of respectability over the worst portions of his character. His practical talents, also, and the romantic incidents of his life, his confinement, and even of his death, lifted him out of the ordinary category of brutal and selfish kings and converted a very ferocious warrior into a popular hero. But John was hateful and contemptible in an equal degree. He deserted his father, he deceived his brother, he murdered his nephew, he oppressed his people. He had the pride that made enemies, and wanted the courage to fight them. A knight without truth, a king without justice, a Christian without faith,—all classes rebelled against him. Innocent the Third scented from afar the advantage he might obtain from a monarch whose nobility despised him and who was hated by his people. And when John got up a quarrel about the nomination of an archbishop to Canterbury, the Pope soon saw that though Langton was no à-Beckett, still less was John a Henry the Second. A sentence of excommunication was launched at the coward’s head, and the crown of England offered to Philip Augustus of France. Philip Augustus had the modesty to refuse the splendid bribe, and contented himself with aiding to weaken a throne he did not feel inclined to fill. It is characteristic of John, that in the agonies of his fear, and of his desire to gain support against his people, he hesitated between invoking the assistance of the Miramolin of Morocco and the Pope of Rome. As good Mussulman with the one as Christian with the other, he finally decided on Innocent, and signed a solemn declaration of submission, making public resignation of the crowns of England and Ireland “to the Apostles Peter and Paul, to Innocent and his legitimate successors;” and, aided by the blessings of these new masters, and by the enforced neutrality of France, he was enabled to defeat his indignant nobles, and force them for two years to wear the same chains of submission to Rome which weighed upon himself. But in 1215 the patience of noble and peasant, of bishop and priest, was utterly exhausted. |A.D. 1215.|John fled on the first outburst of the collected storm, and thought himself fortunate in stopping its violence by signing the Great Charter, the written ratification of the liberties which had been conferred by some of his predecessors, but whose chief authority was in the traditions and customs of the land. This was not an overthrow of an old constitution and the substitution of a new and different code, but merely a formal recognition of the great and fundamental principles on which only government can be carried on,—security of person and property, and the just administration of equitable laws. All orders in the State were comprehended in this national agreement. The Church was delivered from the exactions of the king, and left to an undisturbed intercourse on spiritual matters with her spiritual head. She was to have perfect freedom of election to vacant benefices, and the king’s rapacity was guarded against by a clause reducing any fine he might impose on an ecclesiastic to an accordance with his professional income, and not with the extent of his lay possessions. The barons, of course, took equal care of their own interests as they had shown for those of the Church. They corrected many abuses from which they suffered, in respect to their feudal obligations. They regulated the fines and quit-rents on succession to their fiefs, the management of crown wards, and the marriage of heiresses and widows. They insisted also on the assemblage of a council of the great and lesser barons, to consult for the general weal, and put some check on the disposal of their lands by their tenants, in order to keep their vassals from impoverishment and their military organization unimpaired. But when church and aristocracy were thus protected from the tyranny of the king, were the interests of the great mass of the people neglected? This has sometimes been argued against the legislators of Runnymede, but very unjustly; for as much attention was paid to the liberties and immunities of the municipal corporations and of ordinary subjects as to those of the prelates and lords. Every person had the right to dispose of his property by will. No arbitrary tolls could be exacted of merchants. All men might enter or leave the kingdom without restraint. The courts of law were no longer to be stationary at Westminster, to which complainants from Northumberland or Cornwall never could make their way, but were to travel about, bringing justice to every man’s door. They were to be open to every one, and justice was to be neither “sold, refused, nor delayed.” Circuits were to be held every year. No man was to be put on his trial from mere rumour, but on the evidence of lawful witnesses. No sentence could be passed on a freeman except by his peers in jury assembled. No fine could be imposed so exorbitant as to ruin the culprit. But the bishops and clergy, the nobility and their vassals, the corporations and freemen, were not the main bodies of the State; and the framers of Magna Charta have been blamed for neglecting the great majority of the population, which consisted of serfs or villeins. This accusation is, however, not true, even with respect to the words of the Charter; for it is expressly provided that the carts and working-implements of that class of the people shall not be seizable in satisfaction of a fine; and in its intention the accusation is more untenable still; for although the reformers of 1215 had no design of granting new privileges to any hitherto-unprivileged order and their work was limited to the legal re-establishment of privileges which John had attempted to overthrow, the large and liberal spirit of their declarations is shown by the notice they take of the hitherto-unconsidered classes. For the protection accorded to their ploughs and carts, which are specifically named in the Charter, ratified at once their right to hold property,—the first condition of personal freedom and independence,—and, by an analogy of reasoning, restrained their more immediate masters from tyranny and injustice. It could not be long before a man secured by the national voice in the possession of one species of property extended his rights over every thing else. If the law guaranteed him the plough he held, the cart he drove, the spade he plied, why not the house he occupied, the little field he cultivated? And if the poorest freeman walked abroad in the pride of independence, because the baron could no longer insult him, or the priest oppress him, or the king himself strip him of land and gear, how could he deny the same blessings to his neighbour, the rustic labourer, who was already master of cart and plough and was probably richer and better fed than himself?

But a firmer barrier against the encroachments of kings and nobles than the written words of Magna Charta was still required, and people were not long in seeing how little to be trusted are legal forms when the contracting parties are disposed to evade their obligations. John indeed attempted, in the very year that saw his signature to the Charter, to expunge his name from the obligatory deed by the plenary power of the Pope. Innocent had no scruple in giving permission to his English vassal to break the oath and swerve from his engagement. But the English spirit was not so broken as the king’s, and the barons took the management of the country into their own hands. When the experience of a few years of Henry the Third had shown them that there was no improvement on the personal character of his predecessor, they took effectual measures for the protection of all classes of the people. Henry began his inglorious reign in 1216, and ended it in 1272. In those fifty-six years great changes took place, but all in an upward direction, out of the darkness and unimpressionable stolidity of previous ages. The dawn of a more intellectual period seemed at hand, and already the ghosts of ignorance and oppression began to scent the morning air. In 1264 an example was set by England which it would have been well if all the other Western lands had followed, for by the institution of a true House of Commons it laid the foundation for the only possible liberal and improvable government,—the only government which can derive its strength from the consent of the governed legitimately expressed, and vary in its action and spirit with the changes in the general mind. In cases of error or temporary delusion, there is always left the most admirable machinery for retracing its steps and rectifying what is wrong. In cases of universal approval and unanimous exertion, there is no power, however skilfully wielded by autocrats or despots, which can compare with the combined energy of a whole and undivided people.

|A.D. 1226-1270.|

The contemporary of this Henry on the throne of France was the gentle and honest Louis the Ninth. If those epithets do not sound so high as the usual phraseology applied to kings, we are to consider how rare are the examples either of honesty or gentleness among the rulers of that time, and how difficult it was to possess or exercise those virtues. But this gentle and honest king, who was scarcely raised in rank when the Church had canonized him as a saint, achieved as great successes by the mere strength of his character as other monarchs had done by fire and sword. His love of justice enabled him to extend the royal power over his contending vassals, who chose him as umpire of their quarrels and continued to submit to him as their chief. He heard the complaints of the lower orders of his people in person, sitting, like the kings of the East, under the shade of a tree, and delivering judgment solely on the merits of the case. His undoubted zeal on behalf of his religion permitted him, without the accusation of heresy, to put boundaries to the aggressions of the Church. He resisted its more violent claims, and gave liberty to ecclesiastics as well as laymen, who were equally interested in the curtailment of the Papal power. He granted a great number of municipal charters, and published certain Establishments, as they were called, which were improvements on the old customs of the realm and were in a great measure founded on the Roman law. The spirit of the time was popular progress; and both in France and England great advances were made; deliberative national assemblies took their rise,—in France, under the conscientious monarch, with the full aid and influence of the royal authority, in England, under the feeble and selfish Henry, by the necessity of gaining the aid of the Commons against the Crown to the outraged and insulted nobility. In both nations these assemblies bore for a long time very distinguishable marks of their origin. The Parliaments of France, sprung from the royal will, were little else than the recorders of the decrees of the monarch; while the Parliaments of England, remembering their popular origin, have always had a feeling of independence, and a tendency to make rather hard bargains with our kings. Even before this time the Great Council had occasionally opposed the exactions of the Crown; but when the falsehood and avarice of Henry III. had excited the popular odium, the barons of 1263, in noble emulation of their predecessors of 1215, had risen in defence of the nation’s liberties, and the last hand was put to the building up of our present constitution, by the summoning, “to consult on public affairs,” of certain burgesses from the towns, in addition to the prelates, knights, and freeholders who had hitherto constituted the parliamentary body. But those barons and tenants-in-chief attended in their own right, and were altogether independent of the principle of election and representation. |A.D. 1265.|The summons issued by Simon de Montfort (son of the truculent hero of the Albigensian crusade, and brother-in-law of Henry) invested with new privileges the already-enfranchised boroughs. From this time the representatives of the Commons are always mentioned in the history of parliaments; and although this proceeding of De Montfort was only intended to strengthen his hands against his enemies, and, after his temporary object was gained, was not designed to have any further effect on the constitutional progress of our country, still, the principle had been adopted, the example was set, and the right to be represented in Parliament became one of the most valued privileges of the enfranchised commons.

It is observable that this increase of civil freedom in the various countries of Europe was almost in exact proportion to the diminution of ecclesiastical power. It is equally observable that the weakening of the priestly influence rapidly followed the infamous excesses into which its intolerance and pride had hurried the princes and other supporters of its claims. Never, indeed, had it appeared in so palmy and flourishing a state as in the course of this century; and yet the downward journey was begun. The devastation it carried into Languedoc, and the depopulation of all those sunny regions near the Mediterranean Sea—the crusades against the Saracens in Asia, to which it sent the strength of Europe, and against the Moors in Africa, to which it impelled the most obedient, and also, when his religious passions were roused, the most relentless, of the Church’s sons, no other than St. Louis—and the submission of the Patriarchates of Jerusalem and Alexandria to the Romish See—these and other victories of the Church were succeeded, before the century closed, by a manifest though silent insurrection against its spiritual domination. There were many reasons for this. The inferior though still dignified clergy in the different nations were alienated by the excessive exactions of their foreign head. In France the submissive St. Louis was forced to become the guardian of the privileges and income of the Gallican Church. In England the number of Italian incumbents exceeded that of the English-born; and in a few years the Pope managed to draw from the Church and State an amount equal to fifteen millions of our present coin. In Scotland, poorer and more proud, the king united himself to his clergy and nobles, and would not permit the Romish exactors to enter his dominions. The avarice and venality of Rome were repulsive equally to priest and layman. The strong support, also, which hitherto had arisen to the Holy See from the innumerable monks and friars, could no longer be furnished by the depressed and vitiated communities whom the coarsest of the common people despised for their sensuality and vice. In earlier times the worldly pretensions of the secular clergy were put to shame by the poverty and self-denial of the regular orders. Their ascetic retirement, and fastings, and scourgings, had recommended them to the peasantry round their monasteries, by the contrast their peaceful lives presented to the pomp and self-indulgence of bishops and priests. But now the character of the two classes was greatly changed. The parson of the parish, when he was not an Italian absentee, was an English clergyman, whose interests and feelings were all in unison with those of his flock; the monks were an army of mercenary marauders in the service of a foreign prince, advocating his most unpopular demands and living in the ostentatious disregard of all their vows. Even the lowest class of all, the thralls and villeins, were not so much as before in favour of their tonsured brothers, who had escaped the labours of the field by taking refuge in the abbey; for Magna Charta had given the same protection against oppression to themselves, and the enfranchisement of the boroughs had put power into the hands of citizens and freemen, who would not be so apt to abuse it as the martial baron or mitred prelate had been. The same principles were at work in France; and when the newly-established Franciscans and Dominicans were pointed to as restoring the purity and abnegation of the monks of old, the time for belief in those virtues being inherent, or even possible, in a cloister, was past, and little effect was produced in favour of Rome by the bloodthirsty brotherhood of the ferocious St. Dominic or the more amiable professions of the half-witted St. Francis of Assisi. |A.D. 1272.|The tide, indeed, had so completely turned after the commencement of the reign of Edward the First, that the Churchmen, both in England and France, preferred being taxed by their own Sovereign to being subjected to the arbitrary exactions of the Pope. Edward gave them no exemption from the obligation to support the expenses of the State in common with all the other holders of property, and pressed, indeed, rather more heavily upon the prelates and rich clergy than on the rest of the contributors, as if to drive to a decision the question, to which of the potentates—the Pope or the sovereign—tribute was lawfully due. When this object was gained, a bull was let loose upon the sacrilegious monarch by Boniface the Eighth, which positively forbids any member of the priesthood to contribute to the national exchequer on any occasion or emergency whatever. But the king made very light of the papal authority when it stood between him and the revenues of his crown, and the national clergy submitted to be taxed like other men. In France the same discussion led to the same result. The Gallican and English Churches asserted their liberties in a way which must have been peculiarly gratifying to the kings,—namely, by subsidies to the Crown, and disobedience to the fulminations of the Pope.

But no surer proof of the increased wisdom of mankind can be given than the termination of the Crusades. Perhaps, indeed, it was found that religious excitement could be combined with warlike distinction by assaults on the unbelieving or disobedient at home. There seemed little use in traversing the sea and toiling through the deserts of Syria, when the same heavenly rewards were held out for a campaign against the inhabitants of Languedoc and the valleys of the Alps. Clearer views also of the political effect of those distant expeditions in strengthening the hands of the Pope, who, as spiritual head of Christendom, was ex officio commander of the crusading armies, must no doubt have occurred to the various potentates who found themselves compelled to aid the very authority from whose arrogance they suffered so much. The exhaustion of riches and decrease of population were equally strong reasons for repose. But none of all these considerations had the least effect on the simple and credulous mind of Louis the Ninth. Resisting as he did the interference of the Pope in his character of King of France, no one could yield more devoted submission to the commands of the Holy Father when uttered to him in his character of Christian knight. At an early age he vowed himself to the sacred cause, and in the year 1248 the seventh and last crusade to the Holy Land took its way from Aigues-Mortes and Marseilles, under the guidance of the youthful King and the Princes of France. Disastrous to a more pitiful degree than any of its predecessors, this expedition began its course in Egypt by the conquest of Damietta, and from thenceforth sank from misery to misery, till the army, surprised by the inundations of the Nile, and hemmed in by the triumphant Mussulmans, surrendered its arms, and the nobility of France, with its king at its head, found itself the prisoner of Almohadam. An insurrection in a short time deprived their conqueror of life and crown, and a treaty for the payment of a great ransom set the captives free. Ashamed, perhaps, to return to his own country, sighing for the crown of martyrdom, zealous at all events for the privileges of a pilgrim, Louis betook himself to Palestine, and, as he was bound by the convention not to attack Jerusalem, he wasted four years in uselessly rebuilding the fortifications of Ptolemais, and Sidon, and Jaffa, and only embarked on his homeward voyage when the death of his mother and the discontent of his subjects necessitated his return. |A.D. 1254.|After an absence of six years, the enfeebled and exhausted king sat once more in the chair of judgment, and gained all hearts by his generosity and truth. Yet the old fire was not extinct. His oath was binding still, and in 1270, girt with many a baron bold, and accompanied by his brother, Charles of Anjou, and the gay Prince Edward of England, he fixed the red cross upon his shoulder and led his army to the sea-shore. The ships were all ready, but the destination of the war was changed. A new power had established itself at Tunis, more hostile to Christianity than the Moslem of Egypt, and nearer at hand. In an evil hour the King was persuaded to attack the Tunisian Caliph. He landed at Carthage, and besieged the capital of the new dominion. But Tunis witnessed the death of its besieger, for Louis, worn out with fatigue and broken with disappointment, was stricken by a contagious malady, and expired with the courage of a hero and the pious resignation of a Christian. With him the crusading spirit vanished from every heart. All the Christian armies were withdrawn. The Knights-Hospitallers, the Templars, the Teutonic Order, passed over to Cyprus, and left the hallowed spots of sacred story to be profaned by the footsteps of the Infidel. Asia and Europe henceforth pursued their separate courses; and it was left to the present day to startle the nations of both quarters of the world with the spectacle of a war about the possession of the Holy Places.

The century which has the slaughter of the Albigenses, the Magna Charta, the rise of the Commons, the termination of the Crusades, to distinguish it, will not need other features to be pointed out in order to abide in our memories. Yet the reign of Edward the First, the greatest of our early kings, must be dwelt on a little longer, as it would not be fair to omit the personal merits of a man who united the virtues of a legislator to those of a warrior. Whether it was the prompting of ambition, or a far-sighted policy, which led him to attempt the conquest of Scotland, we need not stop to inquire. It might have satisfied the longings both of policy and ambition if he had succeeded in creating a compact and irresistible Great Britain out of England harassed and Scotland insecure. And if, contented with his undivided kingdom, he had devoted himself uninterruptedly to the introduction and consolidation of excellent laws, and had extended the ameliorations he introduced in England to the northern portion of his dominions, he would have earned a wider fame than the sword has given him, and would have been received with blessings as the Justinian of the whole island, instead of establishing a rankling hatred in the bosoms of one of the cognate peoples which it took many centuries to allay, if, indeed, it is altogether obliterated at the present time; for there are not wanting enthusiastic Scotchmen who show considerable wrath when treating of his assumptions of superiority over their country and his interference with their national affairs.

Edward’s sister had been the wife of Alexander the Third of Scotland. Two sons of that marriage had died, and the only other child, a daughter, had married Eric the Norwegian. In Margaret, the daughter of this king, the Scottish succession lay, and when her grandfather died in 1290, the Scottish states sent a squadron to bring the young queen home, and great preparations were made for the reception of the “Maid of Norway.” But the Maid of Norway was weak in health; the voyage was tempestuous and long; and weary and exhausted she landed on one of the Orkney Islands, and in a short time a rumour went round the land that the hope of Scotland was dead. Edward was among the first to learn the melancholy news. He determined to assert his rights, and began by trying to extend the feudal homage which several of the Scottish kings had rendered for lands held in England, over the Scottish crown itself. When the various competitors for the vacant throne submitted their pretensions to his decision he made their acknowledgment of his supremacy an indispensable condition. Out of the three chief candidates he fixed on John Baliol, who, in addition to the most legal title, had perhaps the equal recommendation of being the feeblest personal character. Robert Bruce and Hastings, the other candidates, submitted to their disappointment, and Baliol became the mere viceroy of the English king. He obeyed a summons to Westminster as a vassal of Edward, to answer for his conduct, and was treated with disdain. |A.D. 1293.|But the Scottish barons had more spirit than their king. They forced him to resist the pretensions of his overbearing patron, and for the first time, in 1295, began the long connection between France and Scotland by a treaty concluded between the French monarch and the twelve Guardians of Scotland, to whom Baliol had delegated his authority before retiring forever to more peaceful scenes. From this time we find that, whenever war was declared by France on England, Scotland was let loose on it to distract its attention, in the same way as, whenever war was declared upon France, the hostility of Flanders was roused against its neighbour. But the benefits bestowed by England on her Low Country ally were far greater than any advantage which France could offer to Scotland. Facilities of trade and favourable tariffs bound the men of Ghent and Bruges to the interests of Edward. But the friendship of France was limited to a few bribes and the loan of a few soldiers. Scotland, therefore, became impoverished by her alliance, while Flanders grew fat on the liberality of her powerful friend. England itself derived no small benefit both from the hostility of Scotland and the alliance of the Flemings. When the Northern army was strong, and the King was hard pressed by the great Wallace, the sagacious Parliament exacted concessions and immunities from its imperious lord before it came liberally to his aid; and whenever we read in one page of a check to the arms of Edward, we read in the next of an enlargement of the popular rights. When the first glow of the apparent conquest of Scotland was past, and the nation was seen rising under the Knight of Elderslie after it had been deserted by its natural leaders, the lords and barons,—and, later, when in 1297 he gained a great victory over the English at Stirling,—the English Parliament lost no time in availing themselves of the defeat, and sent over to the king, who was at the moment in Flanders menacing the flanks of France, a parchment for his signature, containing the most ample ratification of their power of granting or withholding the supplies. It was on the 10th of October, 1297, that this important document was signed; and, satisfied with this assurance of their privileges, the “nobles, knights of the shire, and burgesses of England in parliament assembled” voted the necessary funds to enable their sovereign lord to punish his rebels in Scotland. Perhaps these contests between the sister countries deepened the patriotic feeling of each, and prepared them, at a later day, to throw their separate and even hostile triumphs into the united stock, so that, as Charles Knight says in his admirable “Popular History,” “the Englishman who now reads of the deeds of Wallace and Bruce, or hears the stirring words of one of the noblest lyrics of any tongue, feels that the call to ‘lay the proud usurper low’ is one which stirs his blood as much as that of the born Scotsman; for the small distinctions of locality have vanished, and the great universal sympathies for the brave and the oppressed stay not to ask whether the battle for freedom was fought on the banks of the Thames or of the Forth. The mightiest schemes of despotism speedily perish. The union of nations is accomplished only by a slow but secure establishment of mutual interests and equal rights.”