even an outlying part of the German Empire. Indeed, as late as the Council of Constance, in 1417, the French endeavoured to maintain that rightly England was not a country apart, but that legally it was an integral portion of Germany. If in the making of the nations England was saved, it was in some measure at least because, as the late Lord Acton once declared, the union of this country with the papal system "tended to increase considerably the national power and national greatness." FRANCIS A. GASQUET. Athenaeum Club. 26th May, 1905. HENRY III AND CHAPTER I ENGLAND A FIEF OF THE HOLY SEE KING JOHN died on 16th October, 1216. He was succeeded on the throne by his son Henry III at one of the most critical periods of our national history. The Great Charter of the previous year had been thought by many to have finally settled matters long in dispute between John and the nation at large. Such sanguine expectations, however, argued ignorance of the king's real character. From the first, writhing under the stress of circumstances which had compelled him to seal his approval of the liberties conferred by the Charter on his subjects, he had resolved at the earliest opportunity to shake off the yoke to which he had apparently submitted. The Magna Charta had received John's final assent on 15th June, 1215. Without a moment's delay the king set to work by representations at Rome to obtain from the pope a declaration of its nullity, and a papal absolution from the solemn oaths that bound him to observe its provisions. Any grant of liberties to the nation, it was argued by the king's agent in the Curia, was void legally, if the previous consent of the pope, as overlord of the kingdom of England, had not been obtained. This had not been done, and hence the Charter was undoubtedly void. Further, it was argued B that the king should be absolved from the oaths he had taken, because he had been forced to take them. The pontiff who then sat upon the throne of Peter, was Innocent III, a pope of great ability, and of almost unlimited power in the western world. Of him Mr. Brewer writes that "his transcendent genius. . . is conspicuous not only in the changes he wrought in the whole system of European politics, but still more in his successful mastery of all opposition from contemporary sovereigns. If Alexander desired to find kings as competitors in the race, Innocent was surrounded by monarchs as able as himself, accustomed not to render but to receive homage, capable of resenting any infringement of their dignity. He found Christianity in a fluid state with a tendency to glomerate round different centres, and revolve in different orbits. At his death he left the papacy the sole acknowledged centre towards which all states gravitated as the law of their existence; and perhaps what was more difficult to achieve, he rooted his convictions for centuries in the hearts of men, however opposite their moral or intellectual characters."1 From this point of view one of this great pontiff's greatest achievements was his complete victory at the close of the long struggle with King John. It issued in the king's humble submission on Ascension day, 1213, to the papal envoy, and in his acknowledgement of Innocent and his successors on the throne of the Fisherman, as supreme overlords of the kingdom of England and Ireland. Henceforth, as the terms of the surrender plainly state, the kings of England were to rule as vassals of the pope, and in visible token of this new position John put off his crown and then knelt to receive it again at the hands of the nuncio Pandulph. 1 Giraldus Cambrensis, Opera (Rolls. ed.), i. Introd. lxviii. Is this Ascension-day? Did not the prophet My crown I should give off? Even so I have: As a perpetual memorial of this surrender it was agreed that the country should be bound to pay to the See of Rome an annual tribute of a thousand marks, seven hundred for England and three hundred for Ireland. The royal charter, signed at Dover in the presence of Pandulph on 15th May, the eve of the Ascension, 1213, states that John gave to the pope "the entire kingdoms of England and Ireland and all their rights," etc., "with the common consent" of his barons. The same day, the archbishop of Dublin, the bishop of Norwich and several of the nobility attest the deed and that of the act of homage made by King John to the legate. In this second document the king acknowledged that England and Ireland now form part of the patrimony of St. Peter, the rights of which he was bound to defend against all men. The terms of the papal nuncio's certificate of absolution are, if possible, even more explicit—at least, of what Pope Innocent III understood by the king's act. "Let all men know," it runs, "that by God's grace the king has become another man, since he has adopted the Roman Church as his mother. He has subjected England and Ireland to the Holy Roman Church and has given his territories aforesaid to God, to His holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and to the Lord Pope as a patrimony. He and his heirs are to hold them of the Lord Pope and his successors. Publicly, and before every one, he has done fealty to the Holy Roman 2 Annales Monastici, i. p. 60. 3 Rymer, Foedera (ed. 1816), i. 111-112. 1 King John, Act V. Church and sworn homage on the Gospels, and by his Charter which he has already sent by his messengers to Rome." This being so, Pandulph, the nuncio, charged the English barons and all others to serve the king faithfully, under threat of excommunication should they show themselves disloyal. In the pope's name also, the king of France was ordered not to proceed with hostilities against the English king, as he had been invited to do, because, by the grace of God, John had now become "a son of holy Church." It is by no means clear that the king's assertion, that he had had the full assent of his people in making his submission, is quite correct. It is hard to see how such an assent could have been obtained, and there is little doubt that to many churchmen, like Cardinal Langton, the surrender of England to any "overlord," even were he the pope himself, was eminently distasteful. Moreover, in after years, it was plainly asserted that the nation had never consented to King John's act, and "that even Stephen (Langton) the archbishop had stood against it."1 This, no doubt, refers to the cardinal's subsequent action, as, of course, he was not in England at the time of the submission itself. If we are to accept the evidence of Matthew Paris, the people generally regarded the surrender of their country, to form part of the patrimony of St. Peter, as "famosa" rather than as "formosa"-an "astounding rather than a "pleasing" event. This is probably not far from the truth. The act of submission was acquiesced in for the sake of peace. That it was approved by anyone is extremely doubtful: as indeed how could it be? Probably even John himself did not understand at the time what would be the effect of his submission, and only looked 1 Bartholomeus de Cotton, Historia Anglicana (Rolls ed.), p. 125. " |