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slavery; those who had no land, but were yet capable of bearing arms, were to come to receive the pay of the King. So many answered to this appeal that when they assembled on Barham Down, the Vice-Comites were obliged to send some back for want of food for so great a number. The chronicler significantly adds that, if among these men there had been one heart and one mind towards the King of England and the defence of their country, there would not have been a Prince under heaven against whom they could not have defended the kingdom of England.' That unanimity, however, of heart and mind were wanting; for when Pandulph met John he was able to tell him that the King of France boasted, 'that he had promises of fidelity and subjection from nearly all the magnates of England.'

2

The usual reaction immediately came upon John. The well-known prophecy of Peter of Pontefract flashed upon his mind. His wrongs to the nobles, and their recent attempt at revolt, his cruelties towards the clergy and the monks, his insults to the citizens of London, his reckless and illegal taxation, must all have come back to

1 Roger of Wendover, vol. iii. p. 246.

2 Ibid.

his memory to remind him in how different a position he stood from that in which nearly twenty years before he had defied the impotent threats of Celestine. Then he was the champion of the liberties of England, with a united people at his back. Now there was scarcely an honourable man left in the country whom he could call his friend. The humiliating close of this episode is well known. John surrendered his crown and kingdom to Pandulf, and received it back as a fief from the Pope of Rome.

CHAPTER III.

LANGTON'S WORK FROM 1213-1216.

'HITHERTO,' says Archbishop Parker, in speaking of the stage of Langton's life at which we are now arrived, 'I have spoken of Langton as an ambitious man:1 I have now to speak of him as a lover of his country, and yet the same man.' That this remark is unjust, I trust that I have shown; but that a change was coming over Langton's mind and feelings we cannot deny; and it is most important that we should study that change. It will have seemed perhaps to many of my readers that I have given undue prominence in the last chapter to events which may not seem strictly connected with Langton's life. In this, however, I had an object. Little as one can gather of the details of Langton's early life, one can gain, I think, a very clear idea of the influences which were at work in forming his character and directing his views of events. Among

'Historia de Antiquitate Britannicæ Ecclesiæ.

these, by far the most prominent and powerful had hitherto been the character and policy of Innocent III. No man could have come in contact with that wonderful man without being influenced by him; to an old fellow-student, able to appreciate his learning, and in sympathy with many of his objects, and naturally inclined rather to follow than lead, that influence was irresistible. Nor, too, could Langton fail to be affected, though less powerfully, by the great struggle which was going on in France. There domestic morality and orthodoxy seemed combined on the side of the Popedom; and in Paris, at least, the King appeared as the champion of learning and the friend of the Church, contrasting thereby very markedly with the persecutor of monks and students who ruled in England. From the darker sides of the Albigenses' war, Langton's attention would have been distracted by his interest in English affairs; and he would have been tempted rather to draw parallels between the murderer of Peter de Castro Novo and the persecutor of the Canterbury monks than to have observed minutely the cruelties and treacheries of Simon de Montfort's followers. But from this somewhat passive though interested

observation of surrounding affairs, he was now to be startled into action. He was to be forced to judge and act for himself in his own country, to see around him the signs not only of John's tyranny but of Innocent's ignorance, and slowly but steadily to advance to that position as the champion of English freedom in which we most delight to see him.

Yet he had many difficulties to contend with, and his return in 1213 to England must have been received with very mixed feelings by the bulk of the English nation. To some he must have appeared as the embodiment of that principle of subjection to the Roman See which had just been enforced so degradingly on John. Nor can the zeal for Philip's crusade against England have pleased more than a few of the barons. To the clergy, on the other hand, he may have seemed to bring some hope of relief, but what, and how much, seemed very uncertain. The money due to Langton himself seemed secure; Pandulf, too, had left England loaded with large sums of money;1

1 Roger of Wendover, vol. iii. p. 256; Pierre de Langtoft (Wright's Chronicles of Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. ii. p. 129).

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