Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/461

A.D. TO 1399] temptuous manner in which they wore treated by their Norman lords, they never at any period failed to display the sturdiness of their character. They rose again and again in resistance to the Norman yoke. From the death of the Conqueror to the era of Magna Charta was only 128 years: a plain proof of the rapid growth of the English spirit in the nation.

These facts are of so much importance for the right understanding all that comes after of English history, that we shall save ourselves much trouble by briefly reviewing the realities of the case.



The charter of John was not the first English charter by any means; and Lingard has very justly observed that, had not John taken arms to get rid of it, we should have heard as little of it as of former ones. Henry I., Stephen, and Henry II. all granted charters, to say nothing of those of Canute and Edward the Confessor; and so far was Magna Charta from extending the liberty secured by those charters, that Lyttleton, the great commentator on our laws, declares the charter of Henry I. was, in some respects, more favourable to liberty than Magna Charta itself. Be that as it may, Magna Charta notoriously originated, not with the barons, but with Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury. By him it was drawn up in terse and excellent Latin, and bears all the marks, not of the rude composition of feudal barons, but of the great churchman, who at that period was also the great lawyer. Langton was the soul of the whole opposition. He it was who convoked the barons, and read to them the charter of Henry I., and called upon them to compel John to submit to a new one.

The crisis was most auspicious. The people hated John—all men hated him; and the Church had placed him under the ban. The barons had lately joined in the infamous act of making over the country to the Pope, and they were now as ready to join in humbling John.

John, alarmed, humbly besought the Church, as its vassal, to aid him, and the interdict was removed; nay, it was menaced against all who should oppose John. But Langton, spite of the Pope, still pressed on his great object. The barons fought, and were defeated. Their first martial enterprise, the siege of the castle of Northampton, was an utter failure. They saw that without the people they could do nothing. But Bedford and London declared for them, and they were able to bring John to Runnymede. Without other help the barons never could have come there. Church, barons, people-all had combined to bring the tyrant to submission.