Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/509

 JNNOCENT III AND THE STATES OF EUROPE 459 [terror. Innocent next freed all John's subjects from their )aths of allegiance and all his allies from their treaty engage- ments. Finally, in 12 13 he deposed John and offered the English crown to Philip Augustus, who began to prepare for an invasion. John now was forced to give in after a bitter Struggle of seven years, for he found that his barons and Subjects, over whom he had tyrannized as well as over the Church, would give him little aid against Philip. Accord- ingly he not only agreed to receive Langton and to compen- sate the clergy for the injuries done them, but he became the vassal of the pope for his kingdom and agreed to pay a tribute of one thousandj>ounds a year. This was a great triumph for Innocent. William the Conqueror had refused to make England a papal fief and become the vassal of Gregory VII; now Innocent had succeeded where Gregory had failed. Since the reign of William, the Norman and Angevin kings of England had exercised the most absolute royal authority and had possessed the best organized state in western Europe; now they were reduced to vassalage to pie Holy See. But Innocent's triumph was not unalloyed, for he had bncouraged John's barons to revolt and had thus developed b England a power as hostile to the Papacy as The Papacy jto the Crown. No sooner had John made his and Magna jpeace with the pope than he had to settle ac- counts with his nobility and people, who, under the lead of the very man whom Innocent had put in as archbishop, forced from their tyrant Magna Carta, the foundation of fenglish liberties. Innocent declared this charter null and void, excommunicated the leaders of the opposition to pis vassal John, and suspended Stephen Langton from his archbishopric. But the English barons took a leaf from Innocent's own book. They deposed John and called in French aid. Then, when John unexpectedly died and a new pope accepted the Great Charter, they too accepted John's nine-year-old son as their king and drove the son of Philip Augustus back to France, just as Innocent had counter- manded the father's preparations to invade England in