Page:Dickens - A Child s History of England, 1900.djvu/138

126. But, if you or I give away what we have not got, and what belongs to somebody else, it is likely that the person to whom we give it, will nave some trouble in taking it. It was exactly so in this case. It was necessary to conquer the Sicilian Crown before it could be put upon young Edmund's head. It could not be conquered without money. The Pope ordered the clergy to raise money. The clergy, however, were not so obedient to him as usual; they had been disputing with him for some time about his unjust preference of Italian Priests in England; and they had begun to doubt whether the King's chaplain, whom he allowed to be paid for preaching in seven hundred churches, could possibly be, even by the Pope's favor, in seven hundred places at once.

"The Pope and the King together," said the Bishop of London, "may take the mitre off my head; but, if they do, they will find that I shall put on a soldier's helmet. I pay nothing." The Bishop of Worcester was as bold as the Bishop of London, and would pay nothing either. Such sums as the more timid or more helpless of the clergy did raise were squandered away, without doing any good to the King, or bringing the Sicilian Crown an inch nearer to Prince Edmund's head. The end of the business was, that the Pope gave the crown to the brother of the King of France (who conquered it for himself), and sent the King of England in a bill for one hundred thousand pounds for the expenses of not having won it.

The King was now so much distressed that we might almost pity him, if it were possible to pity a King so shabby and ridiculous. His clever brother, Richard, had bought the title of King of the Romans from the German people, and was no longer near him to help him with advice. The clergy, resisting the very Pope, were in alliance with the Barons. The Barons were headed by, Earl of Leicester, married to King Henry's sister, and, though a foreigner himself, the most popular man in England against the foreign favorites. When the King next met his Parliament, the Barons, led by this Earl, came before him, armed from head to foot, and cased in armor. When the Parliament again assembled, in a month's time, at Oxford, this Earl was at their head, and the King was obliged to consent, on oath, to what was called a Committee of Government;