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 Langton as Archbishop; and for five years he held his own. The Pope tried every weapon at his command; he ‘excommunicated’ John, that is to say, he cut him off from all Christian rites; he put England under an ‘interdict’, which meant that no one could be buried with the full burial service, no one married in church, no church bells rung, and in fact all the best religious services and sacraments were suspended. Finally, the Pope declared John deposed, and told Philip to go and depose him.

Now, much as Englishmen hated their tyrannical King, they hated still more the idea of an Italian priest dealing thus with the crown and liberty of England; and most honest men were prepared to support even John against Philip and the Pope.

John, for his part, confiscated all Church property in England and bestowed it on a set of foreign favourites and parasites, mostly mercenary soldiers from Flanders. Then suddenly he gave away his own cause. In 1218 he became frightened, made the most abject submission to the Pope, and promised to hold his crown and country for the future as the Pope's ‘vassal’, and to pay tribute for it. This was too much for all Englishmen, and the country fairly boiled over with rage.

Yet ‘rebellion’ was a dreadful thing. John was rich, powerful, and held all the important castles of England in his own hands. The man who gave the English barons courage to resist was the very man over whom all this fuss had begun—Stephen Langton. He called meetings of the leading barons, and either drew up or got them to draw up a list of their grievances and those of other classes of Englishmen. This document was to be taken to the King and, if he refused to listen, the