Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/266

252 the English king, as an enemy to the Church of Christ, and called upon all Christian princes to take up arms against him and to join in hurling him from the throne. Stephen Langton, the banished Archbishop of Canterbury, with other prelates, appeared with the Pope's letters at the French court and there called together a solemn council, and informed the king and lords of France that the Pope gave his sanction to the invasion of England. Innocent promised to Philip the remission of his sins provided he accepted and fulfilled the solemn commission with which he was charged. Philip had other inducements to do so, which were sufficiently strong, and he at once collected an array on the coast of Normandy, and caused a fleet of 1,700 vessels to be made ready at Boulogne and other ports to convey them across the Channel.



Aroused by the imminence of the danger, John appealed to his subjects to resist the foreign invader, and collected all the vessels in the kingdom which were capable of being used as transports. Then, under the influence of one of his fits of energy, he acted with boldness and determination; and before the French fleet had quitted Normandy, the English vessel crossed the Channel and swept along the coast. The superiority already attained by the English sailors was clearly shown on this occasion, and was soon to be still more decisively manifested. A French squadron at the mouth of the Seine was destroyed by the English, who also burned the town of Dieppe, and returned triumphantly, the fleet at Boulogne not having ventured to leave the harbour.

While success thus crowned the arms of John on the sea, he possessed on shore a numerous army of stout English yeomen who had joined his standard, and who, whatever might be their feelings towards him personally, would doubtless have fought well to save their country from a foreign yoke. But John's courage seldom endured beyond the first moments of excitement, and when he found time to calculate risks and chances, he consulted his own safety by any means in his power. He took no measures for following up his successes, and it was evident that in spite of his haughty defiance of the power of Rome, he would now be glad to escape from his dangerous position by humbling himself before it. Pandulph, the legate of the Pope, who fully understood the character of John, obtained permission to land in England, and presented himself in the royal