him and leave K. Iohn whereby of necessity he would be soon brought to reason and in all probability it would be a very short War Lewis readily accepted their Offer and came over upon the security of 24 of the principal Barons Sons for Hostages and being joyfully received at London by the Barons had Homage and Fealty sworn to him and he himself swore to restore them their good Laws and their lost Inheritances After which he writ to the King of Scotland to come and do him homage and to all the great Men of England to come and do the like or else immediately depart the Kingdom Upon which the Earls of Warren Arundel Salisbury King Iohn's Brother and the Earl Marshal's Son with mnay others readily obeyed this Summons and left King Iohn as did his Foreigners all but the Poitovins some of them returning home with their Spoils and the rest coming over to the Dauphin From the first arrival of Lewis K. Iohn never stood his ground and though he came with his great Army to Dover to hinder his landing yet he durst not trust that Army to engage but leaving a strong Garison in Dover Castle he took a run to Guilford and from thence to Winchester without stopping whereby he both gave Lewis a free Passage to London to join the Barons and also lost most of his new Conquests in less time than he gained them But the King of France undervalued all his Son's Successes swearing that he had not gotten one foot of ground in England till he was possessed of Dover Castle which made him undertake a vigorous tho fruitless Siege of that place where in a short time the King of Scotland came and did him Homage But while the Dauphin was engaged in that Siege there happened an Accident which altered the whole Scene of Affairs The Viscount of Melun a Nobleman of France who came over with Lewis fell very sick at London And finding himself at the point of death he sent for some of the Barons of England who were left to take care of the City to come to speak with him to whom he said I am grieved for you at the thoughts of your desolation and destruction because you are wholly ignorant of the Perils that hang over your heads for Lewis has taken an Oath and sixteen Earls and Barons of France with him That if ever he get England and be crowned King he will condemn all the Barons that are now in Arms with him against K. Iohn to perpetual Banishment as Traytors against their Soveraign Lord and will extirpate the whole Race of them out of the Land And lest you should doubt of the Truth of this I that lie here ready to die do affirm to you upon the peril of my Soul that I my self was one of those that were engaged with Lewis in this Oath Wherefore I now counsel you by all means to look carefully to your selves hereafter and to make the best use of what I have told you and to keep it under the Seal of Secrecy When this Nobleman had thus said forthwith he expired When this dying Secret came to be spread amongst the rest of the Barons they were sadly cast down finding themselves surrounded with Difficulties and perplexed on every side For as a concurrent proof of what Viscount Melun had said Lewis instead of restoring them to their Rights according to his Oath had given all the Lands and Castles of the Barons as fast as he won them to his own Frenchmen and though the Barons grumbl'd at this yet they could not prevent it But what they laid most to heart was that he had branded them as Traytors They were excommunicated every day and despoiled of all terrene Honour and driven to all extremities of Body and Soul In this miserable perplexity many of them thought of returning and reconciling themselves to K. Iohn but that the Breach was too wide They were plainly at their wits end and were willing to do any thing to be rid of this perjur'd and perfidious Foreigner who had thus ungratefully entered into a desperate Conspiracy against them During this tedious Siege of Dover Castle where Lewis and many of his Barons were sure to be detain'd K. Iohn who had been dodging up and down took this opportunity of making a terrible Inroad into the Counties of Norfolk and Suffolk where he made his usual Progress Northward as if he had taken up a Resolution to live and die in his Calling For one of the last things he did before he sickned was burning to ashes all the stacks of Corn as he went along in all the Mannors of the Abbot of Croyland which were but just inned that Harvest He was first indisposed at Swinshed Abbey but his illness encreasing he could hardly reach Newark Castle and there by the advice of the Abbot Croestoun he confessed and received the Sacrament After which he appointed his eldest Son Henry his Heir and ordered the Realm to swear to him and sent his Letters under his Seal to all the Sheriffs and Castellans of the Kingdom to be attendant on him Just when he was dying there arrived Messengers from some of the Barons about forty of them with Letters to be reconciled to him but he was not in a condition to mind such Affairs In ten days time after K. Iohn's death that Party which had adhered to him with Guallo the Pope's Legate made haste to crown his Son at Glocester And because he was not yet ten years old and so noways concerned in the hated Cruelties of his Father and might be used as an expedient to drive out an already hated and insolent Foreigner he was presently accepted by the Kingdom while on the other hand upon the first knowledg of K. Iohn's death Lewis had in his own Conceit wholly subdued and swallowed up the Kingdom but he found the contrary in summoning Dover Castle upon this occasion thinking to have had the Castle for his News for he met with such a resolute Denial as he took for an Answer and broke up the Siege Afterwards he took some few places but the young King's Party still encreasing and many of the Barons by degrees falling from him and the Forces he had sent for out of France being utterly defeated at Sea and all sunk or taken and he and the Barons that were with him being closely besieged in the City of London he was forced to come to this Composition That Lewis and all his Foreigners should depart the Kingdom and that he should never lay claim to it hereafter but restore what belonged to the King in France and to have fifteen thousand Marks for his Voyage And on the other hand the King the Legate and the Great Marshal being Protector swore That they would restore to the Barons and all others of the Realm all their Rights and Inheritances with all those Liberties which they had before demanded for which the War had begun betwixt K. Iohn and the Barons This
Counsellors and their Abettors and to the utmost of their Power remove them from the King Which when the King understood he betook himself with his Counsellors into the Tower his Son and the great Men abiding still without The next Christmas we find him still in the Tower with the Queen and his Counsellors that were neither profitable to him nor faithful Which Counsellors fearing to be assaulted got a Guard and kept close in the Tower At length by the Queen's means with much ado P. 991. some of the great Men were reconciled and made Friends with them When this was done the King ventured himself out of the Tower leaving the Command of it to Iohn Mansell his principal Counsellor and the richest Clergy-man in the World and went down to Dover where he entered the Castle which was neither offered him nor denied him And there the King found how he had been imposed upon when he saw a Castle so carefully guarded by a Guard of the Barons ly open to him When he went away he committed the Charge of that Castle to E. de Waleram He went likewise to Rochester Castle and several others and found Ingress and Regress at his Pleasure It is plain they only kept them for the King At that time the King thinking himself secure resolved openly to depart from his Oath of which the Pope had given him a Release He went therefore round about to several Cities and Castles resolving to take them and the whole Kingdom into his hands being encouraged and animated thereto because the King of France together with his Great Men had lately promised to assist him with a great Force Coming therefore to Winchester he turned his Justiciar and Chancellor that were lately instituted by the Parliament out of their Offices and created beneplacito new ones Which when the Barons heard they hastened with a great Power towards Winchester of which Iohn Mansell having timely notice went privately down to the King and sufficiently inform'd him of his Danger and fetcht him hastily back again to the Tower of London There the King kept his next Christmas with the Queen and his Counsellors A. D. 1263. R. 47. At which time it was greatly laboured both by the Bishops of England and the Prelates of France to make peace betwixt the King and his Barons and it came to this issue That the King and the Peers should submit themselves to the determination of the King of France both as to the Provisions of Oxford and the Spoils and Damages which had been done on both sides Accordingly the King of France calls a Parliament at Amiens and there solemnly gives sentence for the King of England against the Barons P. 992. Whereby the Statutes of Oxford Provisions Ordinances and Obligations were wholly annull'd with this Exception That by that Sentence he did in no wise intend to derogate at all from the antient Charter of John King of England which he granted to his Parliament or whole Realm Universitati concessae Which very Exception compelled the Earl of Leicester and all that had their Senses exercised to continue in their Resolution of holding firmly the Statutes of Oxford for they were founded upon that Charter Presently after this they all came home that had been present at the French Parliament the King of England the Queen Boniface Arch-bishop of Canterbury Peter of Hereford and Iohn Mansell who ceased not plotting and devising all the mischief they could against the Barons From that time things grew worse and worse for many great Men left the Earl of Leicester and his righteous Cause and went off perjur'd Henry Son to the King of the Romans having received the Honour of Tickhel which was given him by the Prince came to the Earl and said My Lord Earl I cannot any longer be engaged against my Father King of Germany my Uncle King of England and my other Relations and therefore with your good leave and licence I mean to depart but I will never bear Arms against you To whom the Earl chearfully replied Lord Henry I am not at all troubled about your Arms but for the Inconstancy which I see in you Therefore pray go with your Arms and if you please come back with your Arms for I fear them not At that time Roger de Clyfford Roger de Leibern Iohn de Vallibus Hamon le Estrange and many others being blinded with Gifts went off from their Fidelity which they had sworn to the Barons for the common good In commune If M. Paris had been alive he would have told us a piece of his mind concerning this false step of the Barons in putting their Coat to arbitration and submitting the English Laws to the determination of an incompetent Foreigner But we lost his noble Pen A. D. 1259. that is about 4 Years ago presently after the establishment of the Provisions at Oxford So that what has since follow'd is taken out of the Continuator of his History who out of Modesty has forborn to set his name as being unworthy as he says to unloose the Latchet of that venerable Man's Shoo. But we are told that it was William Rishanger who succeeded Mat. Paris in the same Imployment and prosecuted the History to the end of H. 3. I know not by what misfortune we have lost his Provisions of Oxford which p. 975. he says are written in his Additamenta for certain it was by no neglect or omission of his because he died with them upon his Heart For the last Passage but one that he wrote was the Death of Fulk Basset Bishop of London whom we saw above he taxed formerly upon the same account who says he was a noble Person and of great Generosity and if he had not a little before stagger'd in their common Provision he had been the Anchor and Shield of the whole Realm and both their Stay and Defence It seems his faultring in that main Affair was what Matthew could never forgive him alive nor dead And indeed this could not but come unexpectedly from such a Man who had been always firm and honest to that degree as to tell the King when he arbitrarily threatned him for some incompliance of his to turn him out of his Bishoprick Sir says he when you take away my Mitre I shall put on a Headpiece And therefore the Annals of Burton are a very valuable piece of Antiquity because they have supplied that defect and have given us both a Latin and French Copy of those Provisions It would be too large as well as beside my purpose to set them down In short whereas by M. Charta in K. Iohn's time there were 25 Barons whereof the Lord Mayor of London was one appointed to be Conservators of the Contents of that Charter with full power to distress the King in case Grievances upon notice given were not redressed within 40 days On the other hand in this Provision of Oxford which seems to be the easier as much as
his Heir and gave him and his Heirs the Realm of England Bromton Col. 1â—38 Comites etiam Barones mei Ligium Homagium Duci fecerunt salva mea fidelitate quamdiu vixero regnum tenuero simili lege quod si ego a praedictis recederem omnino a servitio meo cessarent quousque errata corrigerem Their Duty to him ceas'd 'till he mended his Fault and returned again to keep his Covenant Quousque Errata corrigat ad praedictam pactionem observandam redeat Col. 1â—39 Paulo infra There is no need of these words at length at the end of every Charter or Petition of Right in case it be broken which we find in the close of Hen. III's Charter In Archiv London Anno Regni 42. Liceat omnibus de Regno nostro contra nos insurgere ad gravamen nostrum opem operam dare ac si nobis in nullo tenerentur All the men in our Realm may lawfully rise up against us and annoy us with might and main as if they were under no Obligation to us Because in the Polish Coronation Oath which likewise is in words at length we have a plain Hint why they had better be omitted an supprest Quod si sacramentum meum violavero quod absit Incolae hujus Regni nullam nobis obedientiam praestare tenebuntur And in case I break my Oath which God forbid the Inhabitants of this Realm shall not be bound to yield me any Obedience Now this God forbid and the harsh Supposition of breaking an Oath at the very making of it is better omitted when it is for every bodies ease rather to suppose that it will be faithfully kept especially seeing that in case it be unhappily broken the very natural Force and Virtue of a Contract does of it self supply that Omission Neither is it practised in Articles of Agreement and Covenants under Hand and Seal betwixt Man and Man to make a special provision that upon breach of Covenants they shall sue one another either at Common Law or in Chancery because this implies that one of them shall prove a Knave and dishonest but when that comes to pass I am sure Westminster Hall cannot hold them In like manner the Barons after they had born with K. Iohn's Breach of Covenant very much too long swore at last at the High Altar at St. Edmondsbury M. Paris p. 253. That if he refused them their Liberties they would make War upon him so long as to withdraw themselves from their Fidelity to him till such time as he confirm'd their Laws and Liberties by his Charter And afterwards at the Demand of them they say that which is a very good Reason for their Resolve That he had promised them those Antient Laws and Liberties and was already bound to the observation of them by his own proper Oath So that the Pope was quite out when he says the Barons set at nought and broke their Oath of Fidelity to K. Iohn for they only helped him to keep his The next thing objected against the Barons is this That they who were Vassals presumed to raise Arms against their Lord and Knights against their King which they ought not to have done altho he had unjustly oppressed them And that they made themselves both Iudges and Executors in their own Cause All which is very easily answered For 1. It was always lawful for Vassals to make War upon their Lords if they had just Cause So our Kings did perpetually upon the Kings of France to whom they were Vassals all the while they held their Territories in that Kingdom And by the Law of England an inferiour Vassal might fight his Lord in a weighty Cause even in Duell The Pope seems here willing to depress the Barons with low Titles that he may the better set off the Presumption of their Proceedings but before I have ended I shall shew what Vassals the Barons were I should be loath to say that the Kings of England were not all along as good Men as their Lords of France or that the Barons of England were not good enough to assert their Rights against any body but this I do say that it was always lawful for Vassals to right themselves even while they were Vassals and without throwing up their Homage and Fealty For that was never done till they declared themselves irreconcileable Enemies and were upon terms of Defiance Thus the Kings of England always made War in defence of their Rights without throwing up their Homage and Fealty till that last bitter enraged War of Hen. 2. wherein he had that ill success as broke his Heart and forced him to a dishonourable Peace the Conclusion of which he outliv'd but three days Amongst other things he did homage to the King of France because in the beginning of this War he had rendred up his Homage to him M. Paris takes notice of it as an extraordinary thing and I do not remember it done before Quia in principio hujus guerrae homagium reddiderat Regi Franciae p. 151. The same was practised by H. 3. toward that Great Man Richard the Marshal he sent him a Defiance by the Bishop of St. David's into Wales Upon which the Marshal tells Friar Agnellus the King's Counsellor in that long Conference before mentioned Vnde homo suus non fui sed ab ipsius Homagio per ipsum absolutus This was reciprocal from the Lord to the Vassal or from the Vassal to the Lord as he found cause And therefore King Iohn's Vassals who are here represented as if they were food for Tyranny and bound by their places to be unjustly oppressed for so the Pope allows the case I say these Vassals if they had been so minded instead of being contented with a Charter at Running-Mead might soon have been quite off of K. Iohn by resigning their Homage to him This K. Edw. the Second's Vassals did in manner and form by the Mouth of William Trussel a Judg in these words Knyghton col 2549. Ego Willielmus Trussel vice omnium de terrâ Angliae totius Parliamenti procurator tibi Edwarde reddo Homagium prius tibi factum extunc diffido te privo omni potestate regiâ dignitate nequaquam tibi de caetero tanquam Regi pariturus I William Trussel in the name of all men of the Land of England and of the whole Parliament Procurator resign to thee Edward the Homage formerly made to thee and henceforward I defy thee and prive thee of all Royal Power and Dignity and shall never hereafter be tendant on thee as King This was the standing Law long before the time of K. Iohn's Barons for the Parliament in the 10 th of Rich. 2. send the King a solemn Message that * Knyghton col 2683. Habent enim ex Antiquo statuto de facto non longe retroactis temporibus experienter quod dolendum est habito si Rex ex maligno consilio quocunque
of Peace and for the Advancement and Honour of his Realm he would willingly grant them the Laws and Liberties which they desired leaving to the Barons to appoint a convenient Time and Place for the Performance They very gladly set the King a day to meet the 15 th of Iune at Running-mead betwixt Stanes and Windsor an antient place for the meeting of Parliaments The King and the Lords accordingly met and their Parties sitting asunder and keeping to their own side treated of the Peace and the Liberties a good while There were present as it were of the King's Party the Arch-bishop and about 30 principal Persons more whom Matthew Paris names but says he they that were on the Barons side were past reckoning seeing the whole Nobility of England gathered together in a Body seem'd not to fall under number At length after they had treated in several sorts the King seeing the Barons were too powerful for him made no difficulty to grant them the Laws and Liberties under-written and to confirm them in his Charter in this manner P. 255. Here follows Magna Charta in Mat. Paris And because there was not room for the Liberties and free Customs of the Forest in the same Parchment they were contained in another Charter de Foresta And then follows the security for them both After this the King sent his Letters Patents to all the Sheriffs in England to cause all persons of what condition soever to swear That they would observe these foresaid Laws and Liberties and to the utmost of their power distress the King by seizing his Castles and otherwise streighten him to the execution and performance of all things contained in the Charter At last the Parliament being ended the Barons returned to London with their Charters Thus have I given you a short view of the noble Conduct of the Barons in their manner of obtaining the Confirmation of their Charter from K. Iohn The restitution of Magna Charta you may call it for the Birth of it you see it was not What I have recited is undoubted History and Record and clear matter of Fact And I have confined my self only to these three last years in which the Barons were in pursuit of this business and took the quickest Steps towards it and above all were put into a right Method by the advice of Stephen Langton the Archbishop to claim their Estate with the Writings of it in their hand For above a dozen years before in the 3 d of this King's Reign upon a Summons of his to the Earls and Barons to attend him with Horse and Arms into Normandy they held a Conference together at Leicester and by general consent they send him word Dan. p. 129. That unless he would render them their Rights and Liberties they would not attend him out of the Kingdom But that impotent demand of their Liberties by the by did them no good but exposed them to still more and more intolerable Oppressions They should have gone to him according to their Summons they should not have sent Not to mention that his Faith was plighted by the Arch-bishop Hubert William Lord Marshal E. of Pembroke Geoffrey Fitz-Peter Chief Justiciar of England whom he sent as his Commissioners to proclaim and keep the Peace immediatly after the death of his Brother Richard That the Earl John would restore all men their Rights Paris p. 196. This was done at an Assembly of the Peers at Northampton before his coming out of Normandy to be crowned Sub tali igitur conventione Comites Barones Comiti Iohanni Fidelitatem contra omnes homines juraverunt Upon these Terms and no otherwise the Earls and Barons swore Fealty to him Which made K. Iohn so much rejoice at Geoffrey Fitz-Peter's Death and swear That then and not before he was King and Lord of England P. 243. Pactis contraire For from thenceforward says Paris he was more at liberty to contravene his Oaths and Covenants which with this Geoffrey he had made sore against his will and loose himself from the Bonds of the Peace he had enter'd into Now these Pacts and Covenants are clearly that before his Coronation which I have just now recited and at this Parliament at St. Albans Anno 1213. not a year before this great Man's Death Where the King's Peace was publickly declared to all his People and it was strictly commanded in the King's behalf That the Laws of his Great Grandfather H. 1. should be kept by the whole Realm and all unjust Laws abolished In both these Affairs he transacted for the King having in this last together with the Bp. of Winchester the Government of the Kingdom committed to him the King being then absent in his way to France Well but now the Barons at last have their long lost Rights restored and confirmed to the universal Joy of the Nation which is soon overcast For K. Iohn immediatly resolves to undo all that he had done being prompted thereto not only by his own arbitrary tyrannical Disposition but also by his foreign Mercenaries whom he had long made his Favourites and Confidents while he look'd upon his own natural Subjects as Abjects The Flanders Ruyters or Cavaliers who now by Magna Charta were expresly and by name order'd to be expelled the Kingdom as a Nuysance to the Realm these being grown his saucy Familiars so followed him with Derision and Reproaches for unkinging himself by these Concessions and making himself a Cypher and our Soveraign Lord of no Dominions a Slave to his Subjects and the like that they made him stark Bedlam And being given over to Rage and Revenge he privatly retires to the Isle of Wight where as Paris says he provides himself of St. Peter's two Swords He sends to the Pope whom he bribes with a large Sum of Money besides his former Surrender of the Kingdom to cancel and annul M. Charta and to confound it with his Apostolical Authority and withal to excommunicate the Barons for it And at the same time he sends the Bp. of Worcester Ld. Chancellor of England the Bp. of Norwich and several other Persons to all neighbouring Countries to gather together all the Foreign Forces they could by promises of Lands and Possessions and if need were to make them Grants under the Great Seal and to bring them all to Dover by Michaelmas That 3 Months he spent Incognito in and about the Isle of Wight coasting and skulking about and sometimes exercising Piracy out at Sea so that it was not then known where he was nor what was become of him but thus he whiled away the time contemplating his Treason and waiting for the incomprehensible Enemy-Friends he had sent for Hostiles amicos amicabiles hostes p. 265. I know not whether this Desertion and not providing for the Government in his Absence and sending the Great Seal of England upon such an Errand out of the Realm may not with some men amount to a modern Abdication But