by Edmund Burke
John accepted a sovereignty weakened in the very act by which he acquired it; but he submitted to the times. He came to the throne at the age of thirty-two. He had entered early into business, and had been often involved in difficult and arduous enterprises, in which he experienced a variety of men and fortunes. His father, whilst he was very young, had sent him into Ireland, which kingdom was destined for his portion, in order to habituate that people to their future sovereign, and to give the young prince an opportunity of conciliating the favor of his new subjects. But he gave on this occasion no good omens of capacity for government. Full of the insolent levity of a young man of high rank without education, and surrounded with others equally unpractised, he insulted the Irish chiefs, and, ridiculing their uncouth garb and manners, he raised such a disaffection to the English government, and so much opposition to it, as all the wisdom of his father’s best officers and counsellors was hardly able to overcome. In the decline of his father’s life he joined in the rebellion of his brothers, with so much more guilt as with more ingratitude and hypocrisy. During the reign of Richard he was the perpetual author of seditions and tumults; and yet was pardoned, and even favored by that prince to his death, when he very unaccountably appointed him heir to all his dominions.
It was of the utmost moment to John, who had no solid title, to conciliate the favor of all the world. Yet one of his first steps, whilst his power still remained dubious and unsettled, was, on pretence of consanguinity, to divorce his wife Avisa, with whom he had lived many years, and to marry Isabella of Angoulême, a woman of extraordinary beauty, but who had been betrothed to Hugh, Count of Marche: thus disgusting at once the powerful friends of his divorced wife, and those of the Earl of Marche, whom he had so sensibly wronged.
A.D. 1200.The King of France, Philip Augustus, saw with pleasure these proceedings of John, as he had before rejoiced at the dispute about the succession. He had been always employed, and sometimes with success, to reduce the English power through the reigns of one very able and one very warlike prince. He had greater advantages in this conjuncture, and a prince of quite another character now to contend with. He was therefore not long without choosing his part; and whilst he secretly encouraged the Count of Marche, already stimulated by his private wrongs, he openly supported the claim of Arthur to the Duchies of Anjou and Touraine. It was the character of this prince readily to lay aside and as readily to reassume his enterprises, as his affairs demanded. He saw that he had declared himself too rashly, and that he was in danger of being assaulted upon every side. He saw it was necessary to break an alliance, which the nice circumstances and timid character of John would enable him to do. In fact, John was at this time united in a close alliance with the Emperor and the Earl of Flanders; and these princes were engaged in a war with France. He had then a most favorable opportunity to establish all his claims, and at the same time to put the King of France out of a condition to question them ever after. But he suffered himself to be overreached by the artifices of Philip: he consented to a treaty of peace, by which he received an empty acknowledgment of his right to the disputed territories, and in return for which acknowledgment he renounced his alliance with the Emperor. By this act he at once strengthened his enemy, gave up his ally, and lowered his character with his subjects and with all the world.
A.D. 1201.
A.D. 1202.This treaty was hardly signed, when the ill consequences of his conduct became evident. The Earl of Marche and Arthur immediately renewed their claims and hostilities under the protection of the King of France, who made a strong diversion by invading Normandy. At the commencement of these motions, John, by virtue of a prerogative hitherto undisputed, summoned his English barons to attend him into France; but instead of a compliance with his orders, he was surprised with a solemn demand of their ancient liberties. It is astonishing that the barons should at that time have ventured on a resolution of such dangerous importance, as they had provided no sort of means to support them. But the history of those times furnishes many instances of the like want of design in the most momentous affairs, and shows that it is in vain to look for political causes for the actions of men, who were most commonly directed by a brute caprice, and were for the greater part destitute of any fixed principles of obedience or resistance. The king, sensible of the weakness of his barons, fell upon some of their castles with such timely vigor, and treated those whom he had reduced with so much severity, that the rest immediately and abjectly submitted. He levied a severe tax upon their fiefs; and thinking himself more strengthened by this treasure than the forced service of his barons, he excused the personal attendance of most of them, and, passing into Normandy, he raised an army there. He found that his enemies had united their forces, and invested the castle of Mirebeau, a place of importance, in which his mother, from whom he derived his right to Guienne, was besieged. He flew to the relief of this place with the spirit of a greater character, and the success was answerable. The Breton and Poitevin army was defeated, his mother was freed, and the young Duke of Brittany and his sister were made prisoners. The latter he sent into England, to be confined in the castle of Bristol; the former he carried with him to Rouen. The good fortune of John now seemed to be at its highest point; but it was exalted on a precipice; and this great victory proved the occasion of all the evils which afflicted his life.
A.D. 1203.John was not of a character to resist the temptation of having the life of his rival in his hands. All historians are as fully agreed that he murdered his nephew as they differ in the means by which he accomplished that crime. But the report was soon spread abroad, variously heightened in the circumstances by the obscurity of the fact, which left all men at liberty to imagine and invent, and excited all those sentiments of pity and indignation which a very young prince of great hopes, cruelly murdered by his uncle, naturally inspire. Philip had never missed an occasion of endeavoring to ruin the King of England: and having now acquired an opportunity of accomplishing that by justice which he had in vain sought by ambition, he filled every place with complaints of the cruelty of John, whom, as a vassal to the crown of France, the king accused of the murder of another vassal, and summoned him to Paris to be tried by his peers. It was by no means consistent either with the dignity or safety of John to appear to this summons. He had the argument of kings to justify what he had done. But as in all great crimes there is something of a latent weakness, and in a vicious caution something material is ever neglected, John, satisfied with removing his rival, took no thought about his enemy; but whilst he saw himself sentenced for non-appearance in the Court of Peers, whilst he saw the King of France entering Normandy with a vast army in consequence of this sentence, and place after place, castle after castle, falling before him, he passed his time at Rouen in the profoundest tranquillity, indulging himself in indolent amusements, and satisfied with vain threatenings and boasts, which only added greater shame to his inactivity. The English barons who had attended him in this expedition, disaffected from the beginning, and now wearied with being so long witnesses to the ignominy of their sovereign, retired to their own country, and there spread the report of his unaccountable sloth and cowardice. John quickly followed them; and returning into his kingdom, polluted with the charge of so heavy a crime, and disgraced by so many follies, instead of aiming by popular acts to reestablish his character, he exacted a seventh of their movables from the barons, on pretence that they had deserted his service. He laid the same imposition on the clergy, without giving himself the trouble of seeking for a pretext. He made no proper use of these great supplies, but saw the great city of Rouen, always faithful to its sovereigns, and now exerting the most strenuous efforts in his favor, obliged at length to surrender, without the least attempt to relieve it Thus the whole Duchy of Normandy, originally acquired by the valor of his ancestors, and the source from which the greatness of his family had been derived, after being supported against all shocks for three hundred years, was torn forever from the stock of Rollo, and reunited to the crown of France
. Immediately all the rest of the provinces which he held on the continent, except a part of Guienne, despairing of his protection, and abhorring his government, threw themselves into the hands of Philip.
Meanwhile the king by his personal vices completed the odium which he had acquired by the impotent violence of his government. Uxorious and yet dissolute in his manners, he made no scruple frequently to violate the wives and daughters of his nobility, that rock on which tyranny has so often split. Other acts of irregular power, in their greatest excesses, still retain the characters of sovereign authority; but here the vices of the prince intrude into the families of the subject, and, whilst they aggravate the oppression, lower the character of the oppressor.
In the disposition which all these causes had concurred universally to diffuse, the slightest motion in his kingdom threatened the most dangerous consequences. Those things which in quiet times would have only raised a slight controversy, now, when the minds of men were exasperated and inflamed, were capable of affording matter to the greatest revolutions. The affairs of the Church, the winds which mostly governed the fluctuating people, were to be regarded with the utmost attention. Above all, the person who filled the see of Canterbury, which stood on a level with the throne itself, was a matter of the last importance. Just at this critical time died Hubert, archbishop of that see, a man who had a large share in procuring the crown for John, and in weakening its authority by his acts at the ceremony of the coronation, as well as by his subsequent conduct. Immediately on the death of this prelate, a cabal of obscure monks, of the Abbey of St. Augustin, assemble by night, and first binding themselves by a solemn oath not to divulge their proceedings, until they should be confirmed by the Pope, they elect one Reginald, their sub-prior, Archbishop of Canterbury. The person elected immediately crossed the seas; but his vanity soon discovered the secret of his greatness. The king received the news of this transaction with surprise and indignation. Provoked at such a contempt of his authority, he fell severely on the monastery, no less surprised than himself at the clandestine proceeding of some of its members. But the sounder part pacified him in some measure by their submission. They elected a person recommended by the king, and sent fourteen of the most respectable of their body to Rome, to pray that the former proceedings should be annulled, and the later and more regular confirmed. To this matter of contention another was added. A dispute had long subsisted between the suffragan bishops of the province of Canterbury and the monks of the Abbey of St. Austin, each claiming a right to elect the metropolitan. This dispute was now revived, and pursued with much vigor. The pretensions of the three contending parties were laid before the Pope, to whom such disputes were highly pleasing, as he knew that all claimants willingly conspire to flatter and aggrandize that authority from which they expect a confirmation of their own. The first election, he nulled, because its irregularity was glaring. The right of the bishops was entirely rejected: the Pope looked with an evil eye upon those whose authority he was every day usurping. The second election was set aside, as made at the king’s instance: this was enough to make it very irregular. The canon law had now grown up to its full strength. The enlargement of the prerogative of the Pope was the great object of this jurisprudence, — a prerogative which, founded on fictitious monuments, that are forged in an ignorant age, easily admitted by a credulous people, and afterwards confirmed and enlarged by these admissions, not satisfied with the supremacy, encroached on every minute part of Church government, and had almost annihilated the episcopal jurisdiction throughout Europe. Some canons had given the metropolitan a power of nominating a bishop, when the circumstances of the election were palpably irregular; and as it does not appear that there was any other judge of the irregularity than the metropolitan himself, the election below in effect became nugatory. The Pope, taking the irregularity in this case for granted, in virtue of this canon, and by his plenitude of power, ordered the deputies of Canterbury to proceed to a new election. At the same time he recommended to their choice Stephen Langton, their countryman, — a person already distinguished for his learning, of irreproachable morals, and free from every canonical impediment. This authoritative request the monks had not the courage to oppose in the Pope’s presence and in his own city. They murmured, and submitted.
A.D. 1208.In England this proceeding was not so easily ratified. John drove the monks of Canterbury from their monastery, and, having seized upon their revenues, threatened the effects of the same indignation against all those who seemed inclined to acquiesce in the proceedings of Rome. But Rome had not made so bold a step with intention to recede. On the king’s positive refusal to admit Langton, and the expulsion of the monks of Canterbury, England was laid under an interdict. Then divine service at once ceased throughout the kingdom; the churches were shut; the sacraments were suspended; the dead were buried without honor, in highways and ditches, and the living deprived of all spiritual comfort. On the other hand, the king let loose his indignation against the ecclesiastics, — seizing their goods, throwing many into prison, and permitting or encouraging all sorts of violence against them. The kingdom was thrown into the most terrible confusion; whilst the people, uncertain of the object or measure of their allegiance, and distracted with opposite principles of duty, saw themselves deprived of their religious rites by the ministers of religion, and their king, furious with wrongs not caused by them, falling indiscriminately on the innocent and the guilty: for John, instead of soothing his people in this their common calamity, sought to terrify them into obedience. In a progress which he made into the North, he threw down the inclosures of his forests, to let loose the wild beasts upon their lands; and as he saw the Papal proceedings increase with his opposition, he thought it necessary to strengthen himself by new devices. He extorted hostages and a new oath of fidelity from his barons. He raised a great army, to divert the thoughts of his subjects from brooding too much on their distracted condition. This army he transported into Ireland; and as it happened to his father in a similar dispute with the Pope, whilst he was dubious of his hereditary kingdom, he subdued Ireland. At this time he is said to have established the English laws in that kingdom, and to have appointed itinerant justices.
At length the sentence of excommunication was fulminated against the king. In the same year the same sentence was pronounced upon the Emperor Otho; and this daring Pope was not afraid at once to drive to extremities the two greatest princes in Europe. And truly, nothing is more remarkable than the uniform steadiness of the court of Rome in the pursuits of her ambitious projects. For, knowing that pretensions which stand merely in opinion cannot bear to be questioned in any part, though she had hitherto seen the interdict produce but little effect, and perceived that the excommunication itself could draw scarce one poor bigot from the king’s service, yet she receded not the least point from the utmost of her demand. She broke off an accommodation just on the point of being concluded, because the king refused to repair the losses which the clergy had suffered, though he agreed to everything else, and even submitted to receive the archbishop, who, being obtruded on him, had in reality been set over him. But the Pope, bold as politic, determined to render him perfectly submissive, and to this purpose brought out the last arms of the ecclesiastic stores, which were reserved for the most extreme occasions. Having first released the English subjects from their oath of allegiance, by an unheard-of presumption, he formally deposed John from his throne and dignity; he invited the King of France to take possession of the forfeited crown; he called forth all persons from all parts of Europe to assist in this expedition, by the pardons and privileges of those who fought for the Holy Land.
A.D. 1218.This proceeding did not astonish the world. The King of France, having driven John from all he held on the continent, gladly saw religion itself invite him to farther conquests. He summoned all his vassals, under the penalty of felony, and the opprobrious name of culvertage, (a name of all things dreaded by both nations,) to attend in this expedition; and such force had this threat, and th
e hope of plunder in England, that a very great army was in a short time assembled. A fleet also rendezvoused in the mouth of the Seine, by the writers of these times said to consist of seventeen hundred sail. On this occasion John roused all his powers. He called upon all his people who by the duty of their tenure or allegiance were obliged to defend their lord and king, and in his writs stimulated them by the same threats of culvertage which had been employed against him. They operated powerfully in his favor. His fleet in number exceeded the vast navy of France; his army was in everything but heartiness to the cause equal, and, extending along the coast of Kent, expected the descent of the French forces.
