gluttony and lust.1 For about a year it seems

not unsuccessful check was offered

interfered to prevent the

2

that one to the tyranny of John. Hubert of Canterbury oppressions of the Cistercians, and even forced some confession of penitence from John.3 But whatever check Hubert may have had upon the King was soon ended by his death in 1205.

The monks, flushed by recent victories,1 and irritated by recent tyrannies, at once determined by a bold stroke to free themselves from all control, and elected the sub-prior to the archbishopric without waiting either for the King or the suffragan bishops, and appealed for confirmation to their one sure supporter, the Pope. Yet no sooner had their election been completed, and the messengers safely despatched to Rome, than their hearts failed them, and they appealed to John, then in Flanders, to allow them their usual free

1 Mat. West., p. 265; Walt. Heming., p. 235.

2 R. de Cog., p. 861. See also Hubert's check on John in the matter of the church of Faversham mentioned in the Historia de Antiquitate Britannicæ Ecclesiæ, p. 153.

3 See a letter of Innocent's, p. 972, vol. ccxiv. of Migne's Patrologia. See, too, the account of John's penance at the funeral of Hugh of Lincoln, R. de Cog., p. 867.

See esp. Hist. de Ant. Eccle., as above.

dom of election. In this curiously blundering fraud they were easily outwitted by John, who, while nominally conceding to them their requested freedom, at once presented them the Bishop of Norwich, John Gray, as a fit person to elect. Fearing John's indignation, they consented; and while their messengers were hastening to Rome to secure the confirmation of Reginald's election, they at home were electing and consecrating John Gray for their archbishop. The method by which Innocent cut the knot is well known. Rejecting the candidates, both of the monks and of the King, he offered them as a substitute, Stephen Langton.

CHAPTER II.

LANGTON'S PREPARATION FOR HIS WORK,

-1213.

THE family of Stephen Langton seems, so far as one can judge from somewhat conflicting evidence, to have been settled at Church Langton, in Leicestershire, although it is not so clear that Stephen himself was born there. They had probably lived there in times preceding the Conquest, but had mixed their blood with that of the Norman conquerors.

Of Langton's boyhood we know absolutely nothing. The first stage in the history of which we have any records is his career at the University of Paris. From our ignorance of the date of his birth it is impossible to state with accuracy the year in which this career began, but that it included the latter years of the twelfth, and the four first of the thirteenth century, there seems little reason to doubt. The University of Paris

was at this time the resort of the most distinguished men of all countries. Whether, as has been asserted, this university had originally sprung from the schools connected with the Church of Paris (Notre Dame),' or not, it seems clear that, towards the end of the twelfth century, it had outgrown the feelings and traditions which would be produced by such an origin. Certainly, at least the effect on the students does not seem to have been of a kind to strengthen their orthodoxy. Ralph de Diceto, the fiercest of English chroniclers against monks and popes, had studied there. Wireker had evidently collected there his materials for one of the bitterest satires on the monks; and there, too, Girauld de Barri had strengthened himself in that stiff-necked patriotism which, though connecting itself with ecclesiastical traditions, proved as obnoxious to popes as to kings.

But more interesting to Langton than any of his own countrymen, was a young Roman nobleman, of the name of Lothario Conti. This youth was older in standing than Langton himself, and was distinguished in the University by his grace of

Histoire littéraire de la France, vol. xvi. pp. 41, 42.

1

But

manner and his purity of life. He, like Langton, while interested in every variety of learning, must have felt painfully the indifference to theological studies,3 which appears to have been growing up at the time; and he devoted himself especially to that study under Peter de Corbeil. though Langton appears to have gone at an early age to France,1 and though his advancement there was rapid, he can hardly long have been Master of Arts when young Conti, in 1190, became Cardinal-Deacon at Rome. Langton's energy, however, does not seem to have been slackened by this loss, and he devoted himself to organising a more systematic course of theological instruction than had hitherto prevailed at Paris.

Thoroughly imbued with the scholastic subtleties of the time, and determined to use every kind of knowledge, from the logic of Aristotle to the songs of the troubadours, for the advancement of his purpose, one cannot doubt that Langton must have succeeded in exciting the interest and attention of his scholars. Undoubtedly, the chro

'Hurter, Geschichte Innocenz des Dritten, vol. i. p. 35.

2 Ibid., pp. 50, 51.

See Bulæus Hist. Univ. Paris, vol. iii. p. 9.

Histoire littéraire de la France, vol. xviii. p. 50.