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
Realm and not the Realm for the King And I can shew a hundred places in Antiquity where the Body of this Nation is called a Republick as for instance where Bracton says Laws are made communi reipublicae sponsione tho I confess in relation to a King it oftner goes by the prouder name of Realm But this Constitution of State and Regal Government which is the Constitution of England cannot be so well understood by any other one Book as by my Lord Chancellour Fortescue's which was a Book writ for the Nonce and to instruct the Prince into what sort of Government he was like to succeed As directly opposite to this Government he has painted the French Government Fortescue p. 79. made up of Men at Arms and Edicts The Prince in the conclusion of it P. 130. does not doubt but this Discourse of the Chancellor's will be profitable to the Kings of England which hereafter shall be and I am satisfied that no wise King after he has read that little Book would change Governments with the Grand Seignior And as the Prince has recommended the usefulness of this Discourse to all future Kings so I heartily recommend it to the careful perusal of all Englishmen who having seen a Succession of bad Reigns think there is somewhat in the Mill and that the English Form of Government is amiss whereas the Fault lies only in the Male administration or if there should happen to be any flaw or defect in any of the occasional Laws it may easily and ought to be rectified every Parliament that sits down as the Book says P. 129. I never heard of any that disliked the English Government but some of the Princes Progenitours Kings of England who thinking themselves shackled and manacled by the English Laws endeavoured to throw off this State Yoke P. 78. Moliti sunt hoc jugum politicum abjicere that they might rule or rather rage over their Subjects in Regal wise only not considering that to govern the People by the Laws of the State is not a Yoke but Liberty and the greatest Security not only to the Subject but to the King himself and in great measure ridds him of Care But the same Author p. 88. tells us the Success of his Attempt Qui sic politicum regimen abjicere satagerunt these Progenitours of the Prince who thus endeavoured with might and main to be rid of this State Government not only could not compass that larger Power which they grasp'd at but risqu'd both themselves and their Kingdom As we our selves have likewise seen in the late K. Iames. Or on the other side perhaps it is disliked by some who have seen no other effects of it but what have proceeded from the Scotch King-Craft which is worse than no Government at all and have imputed those Corruptions and Disorders to the English Frame of Government or at least think that it has no Remedy provided against them and so have fallen into the waking Dreams of Oceana's and I know not what for want of understanding the True of the English Government But I can assure these Persons that upon further search they will find it quite otherwise and that the English Frame of Government cannot be mended and the old Land-marks better plac'd than we could have laid them with our own hands and withal that all new Projects come a Thousand Years too late For England has been so long conformed to its own Laws and its Laws to it that we are all of a piece and both in point of Gratitude to our Ancestors who have spent their Lives to transmit them to us and out of love to Posterity to convey them a thing more valuable than their Lives we cannot think much at any time to venture our own I am clearly of Sir Rob. Phillips's mind in the Parliament 4 to Caroli Nothing so endangers us with his Majesty as that Opinion that we are Antimonarchically affected whereas such is and ever hath been our Loyalty if we were to chuse a Government we should Chuse this Monarchy of England above all Governments in the World Which we lately have Actually done when no body could Claim it for they could only Claim under a Forfeited Title and at a time when too much occasion had been given to the whole Nation to be out of conceit with Kings As for the remaining part of the Pope's Trash it is not worth answering That the Barons reduced K. John to those streights that what they dared to ask he dared not to deny For they asked him nothing but their Own which he ought not to have denied them nor have put them to the trouble of coming so hardly by it Nor was the Granting of Magna Charta a foul and dishonourable Composition but Just and Honourable and therefore Honourable because it was Just. As for the Compulsion there was in it a man that must be made to be honest cannot complain of that himself nor any body for him In this whole Affair the Pope's Apostolical Authority went farther than his Arguments It is the lasting Honour of Magna Charta and the Barons that they were run down by a Pope and a General Council which were the first that established Transubstantiation Lateran sub Innocent 3. and the deposing of Kings for Heresy either their own or even that of their Subjects if they suffered them in their Dominions in which case the Pope was to absolve their Subjects from their Allegiance to set up a Crusado against them and to dispose of their Kingdoms to Catholick Free-booters This was a powerful transforming Metamorphosing Council but they that could turn a bit of Bread into a God might more easily turn better Christians than themselves into Saracens I take the Decrees of that General Council to be a standing Declaration of War yea a Holy War against all Protestant Princes and States to the end of the World whereby all Papists are the publick and declared Enemies of that part of Mankind whom they have been pleased to call Hereticks for it is the established Doctrine of their Church Having disprov'd Laud's first Charge against M. Charta That it had an obscure Birth as if it had been base born illegitimate or upstart I proceed to the second That it was foster'd by an Ill Nurse In answer to which it would be sufficient to say that it was fostered by a Succession of Kings and above thirty Parliaments and if that be an ill Nurse let all the World find a better But I shall be somewhat more particular and shew what great care was taken of it in After Ages In Edw. 1. time after it had been continued three times ordered to be twice a year read in Churches was sealed with the Bishops and Barons Seals as well as the King 's own and sworn to by the Barons and others * Knyghton Col. 2523. Et ad ejus observationem consilium sinum auxilium fidele praestabunt in perpetuum
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
I am sure that this which follows is enough to justify the Expulsion of a whole Race of Tarquins After Michaelmas he sailed to Dover to meet his outlandish Scum with which he Invades his own Kingdom Such an execrable desperate Crew never set foot upon English Ground so fitted for Mischief and that thirsted after nothing more than human Blood whom his Agents had drawn together out of Poictou Gascony Lovain Brabant Flanders and weeded all the neighbouring Continent for them These made up a vast Army notwithstanding the Shipwrack of Hugh de Boves who was bringing 40 thousand more besides Women and Children who all perished in a Storm betwixt Calais and Dover This Freight of Women and Children several of which were afterwards driven ashore in their Cradles were intended to plant the two Counties of Norfolk and Suffolk after the Extirpation of the English for it is said that this Hugh had a Charter of Inheritance given him of these two Provinces But with these Forces he had he overrun England and wasted it with Fire and Sword in such a manner as no English man can read the History of it without being in pain and torment There is such a Scene in Mat. Paris p. 276. as was never seen again unless in the French and Irish Massacres it looks like Hell broke loose For these Satellites Satanae the Devil's Life-Guard as M. Paris calls them seemed to have prepensed Malice against Mankind and being led on à crudeli Rege imò cruento Tyranno by a cruel King nay it was a bloody Tyrant no Furies could put innocent People in cold Blood of all Ages and Conditions to more exquisit Tortures nor sport themselves more in making Havock and Desolation than they did And with this horrid Ravage he overrun England and proceeded as far as Berwick in half a years time all the Castles of the Barons falling to him either surrendred or for the most part abandon'd In the mean time most of the Barons are at London where we left them making holiday for the grant of M. Charta and pleasing themselves that after so long Oppression and Egyptian Bondage the Liberties of England were restored again in their days They thought likewise that God had touched the King's Heart and he was become a new man and meant the good Faith he had sworn and flatter'd themselves that he would from henceforward inviolably observe their Charters But they were interrupted in this thought by the privat intelligence they had That he had given orders to his Foreigners in whom his Soul trusted to fortify and furnish his Castles with Men and Provisions and to store them with all manner of Artillery but to do it so warily that it might not come to the knowledg of the Barons This boded no good for here was M. Charta concerning the expulsion of Foreigners broken already and therefore some of the Barons went to the King at Windsor to know more of this matter and to try by gentle and wholesom Advice to bring him to a better mind He received them with a blithe Countenance and thereby palliated the inward Venom and swearing by God's Feet he assured them that he had no ill purpose and banter'd and laughed them out of their story Nevertheless before they left him they gathered such marks of his aversion to them and that all was not well that they went back to London lamenting and saying Wo to us and to all England which wants a King that will speak truth and is oppressed by a false underhand Tyrant that uses his utmost endeavours to subvert a miserable Kingdom The very night after this Conference with the Barons it was that he stole away from Windsor to the Isle of Wight and there laid his hellish Plot against the Nation which was so deep that it did not enter into the hearts of the Barons to suspect or imagine They had now recovered the Rights of the Nation which was nothing but their own and had bin most unjustly detained from them and they never intended nor sought for more But because the King went away in a bad mind and because they had certain notice that nothing but their departure from London was wanted in order to surprize it they therefore adjourned their Torneament which they had formerly appointed on the Monday after the Feast of St. Peter and St. Paul at Stanford to be held the Monday sevennight after at Hounslow near London both for the safety of the City and their own This they certify in their Letter to William Albinet who was gon down to his Castle of Beavoir and withal desire him by all means to make one at it and to come up well provided with Horses and Arms that he might win Honour For he that performed best was to have a Bear which a certain Lady would send to the Torneament With such frivolous and idle actions says M. Paris did they entertain themselves little knowing what cunning snares were laid for them Still they remain at London and for want of better Imployment spend their time yet more vainly in eating and drinking and sitting up anights at the expensive dye which however does not look like plotting for if they had been so minded it had bin easy for them in the King's absence to have taken very great advantages against him But they meaning no hurt had reason to expect none and therefore the Invasion after Michaelmas fell suddenly upon them like a Tempest or Hugh de Boves's Storm And being wholly unprovided to resist such an Inundation as this they thought the best way to put some stop to it would be by presently throwing in a good Garison into the Castle of Rochester that the King might not come immediately to besiege London Accordingly they make choice of William de Albinet who was just come from his own Castle and a noble Band of sevenscore Knights with their Retinue for this Service When they came thither they found nothing but bare Walls neither Provision nor Arms nor any thing but what they had brought along with them insomuch that many of the Noblemen repented their coming down and would have returned but William de Albinet overperswaded them to stay and told them it would be dishonourable to desert what they had undertaken They therefore get together what provision they could out of the Town in that short space for within three days the King and his Army were with them and had block'd them up There they behaved themselves like great men but the Siege lasting long they were so straitned for Provisions that they were forced at last to eat their Horses Being thus in distress the Barons at London though with the latest remembred their Oath to relieve them in case they were besieged and marched out with a pompous Army as far as Dartford but there the gentle Southwind met them and blew in their faces and tho it uses not to be troublesom to any body else yet it drove them back as if it had
he was more than half a Norman Now these things being the undoubted Rights of the Kingdom their antient Laws and Liberties and Birthright we have the less reason to be sollicitous in what manner they shall at any time recover them let them look to that who violently or fraudulently keep them from them For it would be a ridiculous thing in our Law for a man to have an Estate in Land and he could not come at it The Law will give him a Way If the Law gives the King Royal Mines it gives him a Power to dig in any man's Land where they are that he may come at his own And so if a Nation have Right all that is necessary for the keeping and enjoying them is by Law included in those Rights themselves as pursuant to them But because this is a great Point and I would willingly leave it a clear one I shall shew that the Barons proceeded legally in their whole Affair and according to the known Principles of the English Government and that all the Pope's infallible Bribe-Arguments against them which have been since plentifully transcrib'd are nothing worth I might indeed content my self with the short blunt Arguments of Mr. Selden who was known to have the Learning of twenty men and Honesty in proportion 1. That the Custom and Usage of England is the Law of England as the Usage of Parliament is the Law of Parliament Now the Ancestors of K. Iohn's Barons recovered their Rights in the same way This was done in William the First 's time in the 4 th year of his Reign when * M. Paris in vit Frederici Abb. p. 48. Videntes igitur Angli rem agi pro capitibus plures convocando exercitum numerosum ac fortissimum conflaverunt they raised a great Army and it was time seeing that all they had lay at stake under a cruel and insolent Prince Whereupon †Coepit igitur Rex vehementèr sibi timere ne totum Regnum quod tanti sanguinis effusione adquisierat turpiter amitteret etiam trucidatus K. William being in a bodily fear of basely losing the whole Kingdom which he had gained with the effusion of so much Blood and of being cut off himself called a Parliament to Barkhamsted where he swore over again to observe inviolably the good antient approved Laws of the Realm and especially the Laws of K. Edward How inviolably he afterwards kept that Oath and how he ‖ Leges violans memoratas Fuos Normannos in suorum hominum Anglorum naturalium qui ipsum sponte sublimaverunt provocationem locupletavit enriched his Normans with the Spoils of his own natural men the English who of their own accord preferr'd him to the Crown I had rather the Reader himself should find out by his own perusal of that instructive piece of History 2. The English Government is upon Covenant and Contract Now it is needless in Leagues and Covenants to say what shall be done in case the Articles are broken If Satisfaction be denied the injured Party must get it as he can Taking of Castles Ships and Towns are not provided for and made lawful by any special Article but those things are always implied and always done Yet seeing Pope Innocent III. in his Bull for disannulling M. Charta for ever and in his Excommunication of the Barons has afforded us his Reasons for so doing we can do no less than consider them The weight of his Charge against them is this That instead of endeavouring to gain what they wanted by fair means they broke their Oath of Fidelity That they who were Vassals presumed to raise Arms against their Lord M. Paris p. 266. and Knights against their King which they ought not to have done put case he had unjustly oppressed them and that they made themselves both Iudges and Executors in their own Cause That they reduced him to those streights that whatsoever they durst ask he durst not deny whereby he was compelled by Force and that Fear which is incident to the stoutest Man to make a dishonourable and dirty Agreement with them which was likewise unlawful and unjust to the great derogation and diminution of his own Right and Honour Now because says the Pope it is spoken to me by the Lord in the Prophet I have set thee up over Nations and Kingdoms to pluck up and destroy to build and to plant he proceeds to damn as well the Charter as the Obligations and Cautions in behalf of it forbidding the King under the penalty of an Anathema to keep it or the Barons to require it to be kept The Barons might well say that the Pope went upon false Suggestions for he is out in every thing For 1 st There was no winning of K. Iohn by seeking to him He would not have granted them their Liberties if they had kissed his Toe The Barons had really born with him longer than they ought for having stipulated to have their Rights restored to them before they admitted him to the Crown it was too long to stay above 15 years for them and to suffer so much mischief to be done in the mean time through their Neglect In the 3 d year of his Reign they met indeed at Leicester and used a sort of Negative means to come at their Rights for they sent him word That unless he would restore them their Rights they would not attend him into France But upon this as Hoveden says the King using ill Counsel required their Castles and beginning with William Albinet demands his Castle of Beavoir William delivers his Son in pledg but kept his Castle And so upon several occasions they were forced to deliver up for Hostages their Sons Nephews and nearest of kin And thus he tyrannized over them till the Archbishop put them into a right Method And when at last they had agreed to demand their Rights and had demanded them they staid for an Answer from Christmass to Easter for so long he demurred upon what he was bound to have done above 15 years before and then gave them a flat Denial So that all the world saving his Holiness must say that the Barons were not Rash upon him Nor 2 dly That the Barons had no regard to their Oath of Fidelity Juramento fidelitatis omnino contempto For their Oath of Fidelity was upon this Condition that E. John should restore all men their Rights and upon the Faith which his Commissioners solemnly made to them that thus it should be they swore Fidelity to him at Northampton So that K. Iohn had no right at all to this early Oath of Fidelity because he himself would not keep Covenant P. 196. nor fulfil the Terms and Conditions upon which it was made The * Et fecerunt illis fidem quod Comes Johannes Jura sua redderet universis sub tali igitur Conventione Comites Barones Comiti memorato fidelitatem contra omnes homines juraverunt Bargain was