with pleasure: he summoned John to stand trial before him and his peers: and, on his non-appearance, he was declared guilty of felony and parricide, and all his foreign dominions were adjudged forfeited to the crown.

of France20.

A. D. 1204.

Nothing now remained but the execution of this sentence, in order to complete the glory of Philip, whose active and ambitious spirit had long with impatience borne the neighbourhood of so powerful a vassal as the king of England. He therefore greedily embraced the present favourable opportunity of annexing to the French crown the English dominions on the continent; a project which the sound policy of Henry II. and the military genius of Richard I. had rendered impracticable to the most vigorous efforts, and most dangerous intrigues, of this able and artful prince. But the general defection of John's vassals rendered every enterprize easy against him; and Philip not only re-united Normandy to the crown of France, but successively reduced Anjou, Maine, Touraine, and part of Poitou under his dominion". Thus, by the baseness of one prince, and the intrepidity of another, the French monarchy received, in a few years, such an accession of power and grandeur as, in the ordinary course of things, it would have required several ages to attain.

A. D. 1205.

John's arrival in England completed his disgrace. He saw himself universally despised by the barons, on account of his pusillanimity and baseness; and a quarrel with the clergy drew upon him the contempt of that order, and the indignation of Rome. The papal chair was then filled by Innocent III. who having been exalted to it at a more early period of life than usual, and being endowed with a lofty and enterprising genius, gave full scope to his ambition, and attempted, perhaps more openly than any of his predecessors, to convert that

20. Annal. Margan. M. West. 29. Chron. Trevit. Ypod. Neust.

ghostly

"That

A. D. 1206.

ghostly superiority, which was yielded him by all the European princes, into a real dominion over them; strongly inculcating that extravagant maxim, "neither princes nor bishops, civil governors nor eccle"siastical rulers, have any lawful power, in church or "state, but what they derive from the pope." To this pontiff an appeal was made relative to the election of an archbishop of Canterbury. Two primates had been elected; one by the monks or canons of Christ-church, Canterbury, and one by the suffragan bishops, who had the king's approbation. The pope declared both elections void; and commanded the monks, under penalty of excommunication, to chuse for their primate cardinal Langton, an Englishman by birth, but educated in France, and connected by his interests. and attachments with the see of Rome. The Monks complied: and John, inflamed with rage at such an usurpation of his prerogative, expelled them the convent; swearing by God's teeth, his usual oath, that, if the pope gave him any farther disturbance, he would banish all the bishops and clergy of England 22. Innocent, however, knew his weakness, and laid the kingdom under an interdict; at that time the grand instrument of vengeance and policy employed against sovereigns by the court of Rome.

A. D. 1207.

The execution of this sentence was artfully calculated to strike the senses in the highest degree, and to operate with irresistible force on the superstitious minds of the people. The nation was suddenly deprived of all exterior exercise of its religion: the altars were despoiled of their ornaments; the crosses, the reliques, the images, the statues of the saints were laid on the ground; and, as if the air itself had been profaned, and might pollute them by its contact, the priests carefully covered them up, even from their own approach and veneration. The use of bells entirely ceased in all the churches; the bells them

22. M. Paris.

selves

selves were removed from the steeples, and laid on the ground with the other sacred utensils. Mass was celebrated with shut doors, and none but the priests were admitted to that holy institution. The laity partook of no religious rite, except baptism of new-born infants, and the communion to the dying. The dead were not interred in consecrated ground: they were thrown into ditches, or buried in the common fields; and their obsequies were not attended with prayers, or any hallowed ceremony. The people were prohibited the use of meat, as in Lent, and debarred from all pleasures and amusements. Every thing wore the appearance of the deepest distress, and of the most immediate apprehensions of divine vengeance and indig

nation 23.

While England groaned under this dreadful sentence, a new and very extraordinary scene disclosed itself on the continent. Pope Innocent III. published a crusade against the Albigenses, a species of sectaries in the south of France, whom he denominated heretics; because, like all sectaries, they neglected the rites of the church, and opposed the power and influence of the clergy. Moved by that mad superstition, which had hurried A. D. 1209. such armies into Asia, in order to combat the infidels, and the reigning passion for wars and adventures, people flocked from all parts of Europe to the standard of Simon de Montfort, the general of this crusade. The count of Thoulouse who protected the Albigenses,

23. John, besides banishing the bishops, and confiscating the estates of all the ecclesiastics who obeyed the interdict, took a very singular and severe revenge upon the clergy. In order to distress them in the tender. est point, and at the same time expose them to reproach and ridicule, he threw into prison all their concubines. (M. Paris. An. Waverl.) These concubines were a sort of inferior wives, politically indulged to the clergy by the civil magistrate, after the members of that sacred body were enjoin. ed celibacy by the canons of the church. Padre Paolo, Hist. Conc. Trid. Jib. i.

was

was stripped of his dominions; and these unhappy people themselves, though the most inoffensive of mankind, were exterminated with all the circumstances of the most unfeeling barbarity24.

Innocent having thus made trial of his power, carried still farther his ecclesiastical vengeance against the king of England, who was now both despised and hated by his subjects of all ranks and conditions. He gave the bishops of London, Ely, and Worcester, authority to denounce against John the sentence of excommunication. His subjects were absolved from their oath of allegiance, and a sentence of deposition soon followed. But as this last sentence required an armed force to execute it, the pontiff pitched on Philip II. king of France, as the person into whose hand he could most properly entrust so terrible a weapon: and he proffered that monarch, besides the remission of all his sins, and endless spiritual benefits, the kingdom of England as the reward of his labour25.

A. D. 1213.

Seduced by the prospect of present interest, Philip accepted the pope's liberal offer; although he thereby ratified an authority which might one day tumble him from his throne, and which it was the common concern of all princes to oppose. He levied a great army; summoned all the vassals of his crown to attend him at Rouen; Collected a fleet of seventeen hundred vessels, great and small, in the sea-ports of Normandy and Picardy; and partly by the zeal of the age, partly by the personal regard universally paid him, prepared a force which seemed equal to the greatness of his enterprize. John on the other hand, issued out writs, requiring the attendance of all his military vassals at Dover, and even of all able-bodied men, to defend the kingdom in this dangerous extremity. An infinite number appeared, out of which he selected an army of sixty thousand men26. He had

24. Hist. Albig.

25. M. Paris. M. Westminst.

26. Ibid.

also

also a formidable fleet at Portsmouth and he might have relied on the fidelity of both; not indeed from their attachment to him, but from that spirit of emulation which has so long subsisted between the natives of England and France.

All Europe was held in expectation of a decisive action between the two kings, when the pope artfully tricked them both and took to himself that tempting prize, which he had pretended to hold out to Philip. This extraordinary transaction was negociated by Pandolfo, the pope's legate to France and England. In his way through France, he observed Philip's great armament, and highly commended his zeal and diligence. He thence passed to Dover, under pretence of negociating with the barons in favour of the French king, and had a conferrence with John on his arrival. He magnified to that prince the number of the enemy, and the disaffection of his own subjects: intimating, that there was yet one way, and but one, to secure himself from the impending danger; namely, to put himself under the protection of the pope, who like a kind and merciful father, was still willing to receive him into his boscm.

John, labouring under the apprehensions of present terror, listened to the insidious proposal, and abjectly agreed to hold his dominions as a feudatory of the church of Rome. In consequence of this agreement, he did homage to the pope in the person of his legate, Pandolfo, with all the humiliating rites which the feudal law required of vassals before their liege-lord and superior. He came disarmed into the presence of the legate, who was seated on a throne; he threw himself on his knees before it; he lifted up his joined hands, and put them between those of Pandolfo, and swore fealty to the pope in the following words. "I John, by the grace of God, "king of England and lord of Ireland, for the expiation "of my sins, and out of my own free will, with the advice "and consent of my barons, do give unto the church of "Rome, and to pope Innocent III. and his successors, the

kingdoms