Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 128.djvu/760

750 :The country saw that the submission of John to Innocent placed its liberty, temporally and spiritually, at his mercy; and immediately demanded safeguards.

That is, the charter of Henry I. And again: —


 * The personal hatred which John had inspired ... was so strong ... that, had it not been for the king's death, England would have most probably carried out a change in dynasty.

I would venture to slightly differ in some points from this statement.

The ecclesiastical disputes did not rally the barons to the support of the Church in the time of John, any more than in the time of Henry II. With few exceptions, the barons sided with Henry against S. Thomas. On the other hand, Mr. Stubbs has truly discerned that the "spiritual and devotional" bishops, exceptions again excepted, were always on the side of popular freedom. The barons acted with the pope so long as he endeavoured to bring the king to reason in their own interests; but they opposed both the king and the pope when Innocent censured their rebellion. This shows that neither before nor afterwards were they acting in co-operation with any cause of law or liberty except their own. They had appealed to the pope as much as, if not oftener than, the king. They not only accepted the pontifical deposition of the king, but afterwards, when he had been absolved and restored, they secretly transferred their allegiance to the king of France. Tyrant as John was, the barons were guilty both of treason and rebellion. Their opposition to Innocent began when he told them so. The pope gave support, not to John's tyranny, but to the king's right. He offered to hear both parties; but the barons would not listen, and levied war. Innocent, before John's surrender, had not backed them in rebellion, but in their just demands; and he backed John afterwards, not in tyranny, but in his honour as a king. Nowhere did Innocent pronounce on the merits of either side. He expressly declared, in his condemnation of the barons, that they had refused all proposals of judicial settlement. So much for the barons in their relation to the Church. But, as Mr. Stubbs truly notes, "the ordinary attitude" of the Church in England in that day, as everywhere and always, was as "the supporter of freedom;" and the archbishop was "its natural leader," a true successor of S. Anselm and S. Thomas, in its conflict for liberty. And with this notable difference from the barons: they rarely, if ever sided with the Church in its conflict for its own liberties. The Church always sided with them and with the people, in their conflict for the laws and liberties of England. This brings out more luminously than I could hope to do the thesis I have undertaken to defend.

Once more, it may be urged that so absolute was the condemnation of the Charter, that even Cardinal Langton, archbishop of Canterbury, was suspended ab ingressu Ecclesiæ et a divinis for the part he had in it. Nothing, perhaps, will bring out more clearly the distinction I have drawn above, between the condemnation of the barons and the condemnation of the matter of the Charter, than the suspension of the archbishop.

Believing that the legate had been gained over by the king and his adherents, and that the mind of the pope had been biased by partial informations laid before him by the archbishop of Dublin and the bishop of London, whom the king had sent to Rome, so as to be really deceived, the archbishop decided on going in person to Rome. A bull then arrived to excommunicate all the disturbers of the king and realm of England. The archbishop was already on board ship when the bishop of Winchester and Pandulph came and urged him to publish the bull throughout the province of Canterbury. The archbishop, believing the Bull to be obreptitious, and that, if he could lay before the pope the full and true state of the case, it would be arrested, would not publish it. The two commissioners then used their powers given in the bull to suspend the archbishop from his office. Without contention or remonstrance, he proceeded to Rome. On his arrival he found the pope greatly incensed, and on his petition to be released from suspension Innocent answered: —


 * Not so, brother; you will not so easily get absolution for all the harm you have done, not to the king of England only, but to the Roman Church. We will take full counsel with our brothers here, what your punishment must be.

The Fourth Council of Lateran was then sitting, and the archbishop took his place in it; but he was under suspension from November 12 to the Easter following.

On this it is to be said that there is not