 CHAPTER XIII England under Richard I called the Lionheart. In the year of our Lord 1189 Richard of the Lionheart succeeded to the throne of King Henry II whose paternal heart he had done so much to break. He had been, as we have seen, a rebel from his boyhood, but the moment he became a king against whom others might rebel he found out that rebellion was a great wickedness. In the heat of this pious discovery he punished all the leading people who had befriended him against his father. He could scarcely have done anything that would have been a better instance of his real nature or a better warning to foreigners and parasites not to trust in Lionhearted princes. He likewise put his late father's treasurer in chains and locked him up in a dungeon from which he was not set free until he had relinquished not only all the crown treasurer but all his own money too. So Richard certainly got the lion's share of the wealth of this wretched treasurer whether he had a lion's heart or not. He was crowned King of England with great pomp at Westminster, walking to the cathedral under a silken canopy stretched on the tops of four lances, each carried by a great lord. On the day of his coronation a dreadful murdering of the Jews took place which seems to have given great delight to numbers of savage persons calling themselves Christians. The king had issued a proclamation forbidding the Jews, who were generally hated, though they were the most useful merchants in England, to appear at the ceremony. But as they had assembled in London from all parts, bringing presents to show their respect for their new sovereign, some of them ventured down to Westminster Hall with their gifts, which were very readily accepted. It is supposed now that some lazy fellow in the crowd pretending to be a very delicate Christian set up a howl at this and struck a Jew who was trying to get in at the hall door with his present. A riot arose. The Jews who had got into the hall were driven forth and some of the rabble cried out that the new king had commanded the unbelieving race to be put to death. Thereupon the crowd rushed through the narrow streets of the city, slaughtering all the Jews they met, and when they could find no more out-of-doors on account of their having fled to their houses and fastened themselves in, they ran madly about breaking open all the houses where the Jews lived, rushing in and stabbing or spearing them, sometimes even flinging old people and children out of the window into blazing fires they had lighted up below. This great cruelty lasted four and twenty hours, and only three men were punished for it. Even they forfeited their lives not for murdering and robbing the Jews, but for burning the houses of some Christians. King Richard, who was a strong, restless, burly man, with one idea always in his head and that very troublesome idea of breaking the heads of other men, was mightily impatient to go on a crusade to the Holy Land with a great army. As great armies could not be raised to go even to the Holy Land without a great deal of money, he sold the crown domains and even the high offices of state, recklessly appointing noblemen to rule over his English subjects, not because they were fit to govern, but because they could pay high for the privilege. In this way, and by selling patents at a dear rate and by varieties of avarice and oppression, he scraped together a large treasure. He then appointed two bishops to take care of his kingdom in his absence and gave great powers and possessions to his brother John to secure his friendship. John would rather have been made Regent of England, but he was a sly man and friendly to the expedition, saying to himself, no doubt, the more fighting, the more chance of my brother being killed, and when he is killed, then I become King John. Before the newly levied army departed from England, the recruits and the general populace distinguished themselves by astonishing cruelties on the unfortunate Jews, whom in many large towns they murdered by hundreds in the most horrible manner. At York a large body of Jews took refuge in the castle, in the absence of its governor, after the wives and children of many of them had been slain before their eyes. Presently came the governor and demanded admission. How can we give it, the O governor, said the Jews upon the walls, and if we open the gate by so much as the width of a foot, the roaring crowd behind thee will press in and kill us. Upon this the unjust governor became angry and told the people that he approved of their killing these Jews, and a mischievous maniac of a friar dressed all in white put himself at the head of the assault, and they assaulted the castle for three days. Then said Jochen, the head Jew, who was a rabbi or priest to the rest, brethren, there is no help for us with the Christians who are hammering at the gates and walls, and who must soon break in. As we and our wives and children must die, either by Christian hands or by our own, let it be by our own. Let us destroy by fire what jewels and other treasure we have here, then fire the castle, and then perish. A few could not resolve to do this, but the greater part complied. They made a blazing heap of all their valuables, and when those were consumed set the castle in flames. While the flames roared and crackled about them, and shooting up into the sky turned it blood red, Jochen cut the throat of his beloved wife and stabbed himself. All the others who had wives or children did the like dreadful deed. When the populace broke in, they found, except the trembling few cowering in corners whom they soon killed, only heaps of greasy cinders with here and there something like part of the blackened trunk of a burnt tree, but which had lately been a human creature, formed by the beneficent hand of the creator, as they were. After this bad beginning, Richard and his troops went on in no very good manner, with the holy crusade. It was undertaken jointly by the King of England and his old friend Philip of France. They commenced the business by reviewing their forces to the number of one hundred thousand men. Once they severally embarked their troops for Messina in Sicily, which was appointed as the next place of meeting. King Richard's sister had married the King of this place, but he was dead, and his uncle Tankred had usurped the crown, cast the royal widow into prison, and possessed himself of her estates. Richard fiercely demanded his sister's release, the restoration of her lands, and, according to the royal custom of the island, that she should have a golden chair, a golden table, four and twenty silver cups, and four and twenty silver dishes. As he was too powerful to be successfully resisted, Tankred yielded to his demands, and then the French king grew jealous and complained that the English king wanted to be absolute in the island of Messina and everywhere else. Richard, however, cared little or nothing for this complaint, and, in consideration of a present of twenty thousand pieces of gold, promised his pretty little nephew Arthur, than a child of two years old, in marriage to Tankred's daughter. We shall hear again of pretty little Arthur, by and by. This Sicilian affair arranged without anybody's brains being knocked out, which must have rather disappointed him. King Richard took his sister away, and also a fair lady named Berengaria, with whom he had fallen in love in France, and whom his mother, Queen Eleanor, so long in prison you remember, but released by Richard on his coming to the throne, had brought out there to be his wife, and sailed with them for Cyprus. He soon had the pleasure of fighting the king of the island of Cyprus, for allowing his subjects to pillage some of the English troops who were shipwrecked on the shore, and easily conquering this poor monarch, he seized his only daughter, to be a companion to the lady Berengaria, and put the king himself into silver fetters. He then sailed away again with his mother, sister, wife, and the captive princess, and soon arrived before the town of Acre, which the French king with his fleet was besieging from the sea. But the French king was in no triumphant condition, for his army had been thinned by the swords of the Saracens, and wasted by the plague, and Saladin, the brave sultan of the Turks, at the head of a numerous army, was at that time gallantly defending the place from the hills that rise above it. Wherever the united army of crusaders went, they agreed in few points except in gaming, drinking, and quarreling in the most unholy manner, in debauching the people among whom they tarried, whether they were friends or foes, and in carrying disturbance and ruin into quiet places. The French king was jealous of the English king, and the English king was jealous of the French king, and the disorderly and violent soldiers of the two nations were jealous of one another. Consequently the two kings could not at first agree, even, upon a joint sold on Acre. But when they did make up their quarrel for that purpose, the Saracens promised to yield the town, to give up to the Christians the wood of the Holy Cross, to set at liberty all their Christian captives, and to pay two hundred thousand pieces of gold. All this was to be done within forty days, but, not being done, King Richard ordered some three thousand Saracen prisoners to be brought out in front of his camp, and there, in full view of their own countrymen, to be butchered. The French king had no part in this crime, for he was by that time travelling homeward with the great part of his men, being offended by the overbearing conduct of the English king, being anxious to look after his own dominions, and being ill, besides, from the unwholesome air of that hot and sandy country. King Richard carried on the war without him, and remained in the east meeting with a variety of adventures in the earlier year and a half. Every night, when his army was on the march, and came to a halt, the heralds cried out three times, to remind all the soldiers of the cause in which they were engaged, save the Holy Sepulchre, and then all the soldiers in Elton said amen. Marching or encamping, the army had continually to strive with the hot air of the glaring desert, or with the Saracen soldiers animated and directed by the brave Saladin, or with both together. Sickness and death, battle and wounds were always among them, but through every difficulty King Richard fought like a giant, and worked like a common labourer. Long and long after he was quiet in his grave, his terrible battle-axe, with twenty English pounds of English steel in its mighty head, was a legend among the Saracens, and when all the Saracen and Christian hosts had been dust for many a year, if a Saracen horse started at any object by the wayside, his rider would exclaim, What is thou fearful? Does thou think King Richard is behind it? No one admired this king's renown for bravery more than Saladin himself, who was a generous and gallant enemy. When Richard lay ill of a fever, Saladin sent him fresh fruits from Damascus and snow from the mountaintops. Their messages and compliments were frequently exchanged between them, and then King Richard would mount his horse and kill as many Saracens as he could, and Saladin would mount his and kill as many Christians as he could. In this way King Richard fought to his heart's content at Arsuf and at Jaffa, and, finding himself with nothing exciting to do at Ascalon except to rebuild for his own defence some fortifications there which the Saracens had destroyed, he kicked his ally the Duke of Austria for being too proud to work at them. The army at last came within sight of the holy city of Jerusalem, but being then a mere nest of jealousy, and quarrelling and fighting soon retired and agreed with the Saracens upon a truce for three years, three months, three days, and three hours. Then the English Christians, protected by the noble Saladin from Saracen revenge, visited Arsavia's tomb, and then King Richard embarked with a small force at Acre to return home. But he was shipwrecked in the Adriatic Sea, and was feigned to pass through Germany under an assumed name. Now there were many people in Germany who had served in the Holy Land under that proud Duke of Austria who had been kicked, and some of them easily recognising a man so remarkable as King Richard carried their intelligence to the kicked Duke, whose straight way took him prisoner at a little inn near Vienna. The Duke's master, the Emperor of Germany, and the King of France, were equally delighted to have so troublesome a monarch in safekeeping. Friendships which are founded on a partnership in doing wrong are never true, and the King of France was now quite as heartily King Richard's foe as he had ever been his friend in his unnatural conduct to his father. He monstrously pretended the King Richard had designed to poison him in the East. He charged him with having murdered there a man whom he had in truth befriended. He bribed the Emperor of Germany to keep him close prisoner, and finally, through the plotting of these two princes, Richard was brought before the German legislature, charged with the forgoing crimes and many others. But he defended himself so well that many of the assembly were moved to tears by his eloquence and earnestness. It was decided that he should be treated during the rest of his captivity in a manner more becoming his dignity than he had been, and that he should be set free on the payment of a heavy ransom. This ransom the English people willingly raised. When Queen Eleanor took it over to Germany, it was at first evaded and refused, but she appealed to the honour of all the princes of the German Empire in behalf of her son, and appealed so well that it was accepted and the King released. Thereupon the King of France wrote to Prince John, Take care of thyself. The devil is unchained. Prince John had reason to fear his brother, for he had been a traitor to him in his captivity. He had secretly joined the French king, had vowed to the English nobles and people that his brother was dead, and had vainly tried to seize the crown. He was now in France, at a place called Evreau. Being the meanest and basest of men, he contrived a mean and basest expedient for making himself acceptable to his brother. He invited the French officers of the garrison in that town to dinner, murdered them all, and then took the fortress. With this recommendation to the goodwill of a lion-hearted monarch, he hastened to King Richard, fell on his knees before him, and obtained the intercession of Queen Eleanor. I forgive him, said the King, and I hope I may forget the injury he has done me, as easily as I know he will forget my pardon. While King Richard was in Sicily there had been trouble in his dominions at home, one of the bishops whom he had left in charge thereof arresting the other and making in his pride and ambition as great a show as if he were King himself. But the King hearing of it had Messina and appointing a new regency. This long-sharp, for that was his name, had fled to France in a woman's dress, and had there been encouraged and supported by the French king. Because all these causes of offence against Philip in his mind, King Richard had no sooner been welcomed home by his enthusiastic subjects with greater display and splendour, and had no sooner been crowned a fresher to interster, than he resolved to show the French king that the devil was unchained indeed, and made war against him with great fury. There was fresh trouble at home about this time arising out of the discontents of the poor people, who complained that they were far more heavily taxed than the rich, and who found a spirited champion in William Fitzosbert called Longbeard. He became the leader of a secret society, comprising fifty thousand men. He was seized by surprise. He stabbed the citizen who first laid hands upon him and retreated bravely fighting to a church, which he maintained four days until he was dislodged by fire and run through the body as he came out. He was not killed, though, for he was dragged half-dead at the tail of a horse to Smithfield, and there hanged. Death was long a favourite remedy for silencing the people's advocates, but as we go on with this history I fancy we shall find them difficult to make an end of, for all that. The French war, delayed occasionally by a truce, was still in progress when a certain lord named Vidomar, vicant of Limoges, charced to find in his ground a treasure of ancient coins. As the king's vassal he sent the king half of it, but the king claimed the hoe. The lord refused to yield the hoe. The king besieged the lord in his castle, swore that he would take the castle by storm, and hang every man of its defenders on the battlements. There was a strange old song in that part of the country, the effect that in Limoges an arrow would be made by which King Richard would die. It may be that Bertrand de Gourdon, a young man who was one of the defenders of the castle, had often sung it, or heard it sung over winter night, and remembered it when he saw from his post upon the ramparts the king, attended only by his chief officer riding below the walls, surveying the place. He drew an arrow to the head, took steady aim, said between his teeth, Now I pray God speed thee well arrow, discharged it, and struck the king in the left shoulder. Although the wound was not at first considered dangerous, it was severe enough to cause the king to retire to his tent, and direct the assault to be made without him. The castle was taken, and every man of its defenders was hanged as the king had sworn all should be, except Bertrand de Gourdon, who was reserved until the royal pleasure respecting him shall be known. By that time unskillful treatment had made the wound mortal, and the king knew that he was dying. He directed Bertrand to be brought into his tent. The young man was brought there heavily chained. King Richard looked at him steadily. He looked as steadily at the king. Naive, said King Richard, what have I done to thee that thou shouldest take my life? What has thou done to me, replied the young man? With thine own hands thou hast killed my father and my two brothers. Myself thou wouldst have hanged. Let me die now by any torture thou wilt. My comfort is that no torture can save thee. Thou too must die, and through me the world is quit of thee. Again the king looked at the young man steadily. Again the young man looked steadily at him. Perhaps some remembrance of his generous enemy Saladin, who was not a Christian, came into the mind of the dying king. Youth, he said, I forgive thee. Go unhurt! Then, turning to the chief officer, who had been riding in his company when he received the wound, King Richard said, take off his chains, give him a hundred shillings, and let him depart. He sank down on his couch, and a dark mist seemed in his weakened eyes to fill the tent wherein he had so often rested, and he died. His age was forty-two. He had reigned ten years. His last command was not obeyed, for the chief officer flayed Bertrand de Gordor alive, and hanged him. There is an old tune yet known. A sorrowful heir will sometimes outlive many generations of strongmen, and even last longer than battle-axes, with twenty pounds of steel in the head, by which this king is said to have been discovered in captivity. Blondel, a favourite minstrel of King Richard, as the story relates, faithfully seeking his royal master went singing it outside the gloomy walls of many foreign fortresses and prisons, until at last he heard it echoed from within a dungeon, and knew the voice, and cried out in ecstasy, Oh Richard, oh my king! You may believe it, if you like. It would be easy to believe worse things. Richard was himself a minstrel and a poet. If he had not been a prince too, he might have been a better man, perhaps, and might have gone out of the world with less bloodshed and waste of life to answer for. End of Chapter 13 Chapter 14 of a Child's History of England This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. A Child's History of England, by Charles Dickens. Chapter 14 England under King John, called Lackland At two-and-thirty years of age John became King of England. His pretty little nephew Arthur had the best claim to the throne, but John seized the treasure, and made fine promises to the nobility, and got himself crowned at Westminster within a few weeks after his brother's death. I doubt whether the crown could possibly have been put upon the head of a meaner coward, or a more detestable villain, if England had been searched from end to end to find him out. The French King Philip refused to acknowledge the right of John to his new dignity, and declared in favour of Arthur. You must not suppose that he had any generosity of feeling for the fatherless boy, it merely suited his ambitious schemes to oppose the King of England. So John and the French King went to war about Arthur. He was a handsome boy, at that time, only twelve years old. He was not born when his father, Geoffrey, had his brains trampled out at the tournament, and besides the misfortune of never having known a father's guidance and protection, he had the additional misfortune to have a foolish mother, Constance by name, lately married to her third husband. She took Arthur upon John's accession to the French King, who pretended to be very much his friend, and who made him a knight, and promised him his daughter in marriage, but who cared so little about him in reality that, finding it in his interest to make peace with King John for a time, he did so without the least consideration for the poor little prince, and heartlessly sacrificed all his interests. Young Arthur, for two years afterwards, lived quietly, and in the course of that time his mother died. But the French King, then finding it in his interest to quarrel with King John again, again made Arthur his pretense, and invited the orphan boy to court. You know your rights, Prince, said the French King, and you would like to be a king, is it not so? Truly, said Prince Arthur, I should greatly like to be a king. Then, said Philip, you shall have two hundred gentlemen who are knights of mine, and with them you shall go to win back the provinces belonging to you, of which your uncle, usurping King of England, has taken possession. I myself, meanwhile, will head a force against him in Normandy. Poor Arthur was so flattered and so grateful, that he signed a treaty with the crafty French King, agreeing to consider him his superior Lord, and that the French King should keep for himself whatever he could take from King John. Now, King John was so bad in all ways, and King Philip was so perfidious, that Arthur, between the two, might as well have been a lamb between a fox and a wolf. But being so young, he was ardent, and flushed with hope, and when the people of Brittany, which was his inheritance, sent him five hundred more knights and five thousand foot soldiers, he believed his fortune was made. The people of Brittany had been fond of him from his birth, and had requested that he might be called Arthur, in remembrance of that dimly famous English Arthur, of whom I told you early in this book, whom they believed to have been the brave friend and companion of an old king of their own. They had tales among them about a prophet called Merlin, of the same old time, who had foretold that their own king should be restored to them after hundreds of years, and they believed that the prophecy would be fulfilled in Arthur, that the time would come when he would rule them with a crown of Brittany upon his head, and when neither King of France nor King of England would have any power over them. When Arthur found himself riding in a glittering suit of armour, on a richly comparison horse, at the head of his train of knights and soldiers, he began to believe this, too, and to consider old Merlin a very superior prophet. He did not know, how could he, being so innocent and inexperienced, that his little army was a mere nothing against the power of the King of England. The French king knew it, but the poor boy's fate was little to him, so that the King of England was worried and distressed. And therefore King Philip went his way into Normandy, and Prince Arthur went his way towards Mirbeau, a French town near Poitiers, both very well pleased. Prince Arthur went to attack the town of Mirbeau, because his grandmother, Eleanor, who had so often made her appearance in this history, and who had always been his mother's enemy, was living there, and because his knights said, Prince, if you can take her prisoner, you will be able to bring the King your uncle to terms. But she was not to be easily taken. She was old enough by this time, eighty, but she was as full of stratagem as she was full of years and wickedness. Receiving intelligence of young Arthur's approach, she shut herself up in a high tower, and encouraged her soldiers to defend it like men. Prince Arthur, with his little army besieged the high tower. King John, hearing how matters stood, came up to the rescue with his army. So here was a strange family party. The boy Prince besieging his grandmother, and his uncle besieging him. This position of affairs did not last long. One summer night, King John, by treachery, got his men into the town, surprised Prince Arthur's force, took two hundred of his knights, and seized the prince himself in his bed. The knights were put in heavy irons, and driven away in open carts drawn by bullocks, to various dungeons where they were most inhumanly treated, and where some of them were starved to death. Prince Arthur was sent to the castle of Phalaise. One day, while he was in prison at that castle, mournfully thinking it strange that one so young should be in so much trouble, and, looking out of a small window in the deep dark wall at the sun-sky and the birds, the door was softly opened, and he saw his uncle the king standing in the shadow of the archway, looking very grim. Arthur said the king, with his wicked eyes more on the stone floor than on his nephew, "'Will you not trust to the gentleness, the friendship, and the truthfulness of your loving uncle?' "'I will tell my loving uncle that,' replied the boy, when he does me right. Let him restore to me my kingdom of England, and then come and ask me the question.' The king looked at him, and went out. "'Keep that boy close prisoner,' said he to the warden of the castle. Then the king took secret counsel, with the worst of his nobles, how the prince was to be got rid of. Some said, "'Put out your eyes, and keep him in prison, as Robert of Normandy was kept.' Others said, "'Have him stabbed.' Others said, "'Have him hanged.' Others, "'Have him poisoned.'" King John, feeling that in any case whatever was done afterwards, it would be a satisfaction to his mind to have this handsome eyes burnt out that had looked at him so proudly, while his own royal eyes were blinking at the stone floor, sent certain ruffians to fillets to blind the boy with red hot irons. But Arthur so pathetically entreated them, and shed such piteous tears, and so appealed to Hubert de Borg, or the warden of the castle, who had a love for him, and was an honorable tender man that Hubert could not bear it. To his eternal honour he prevented the torture from being performed, and, at his own risk, sent the savages away. The chafed and disappointed king bethought himself of the stabbing suggestion next, and with his shuffling manner and his cruel face proposed it to one William de Bray. "'I am a gentleman, and not an executioner,' said William de Bray, and left the presents with disdain. But it was not difficult for a king to hire a murderer in those days. King John found one for his money, and sent him down to the castle for lays. "'On what errand does thou come?' said Hubert to this fellow. "'To dispatch young Arthur,' he returned. "'Go back to him who sent thee,' answered Hubert, "'and say that I will do it.' King John, very well knowing that Hubert would never do it, but that he courageously sent this reply to save the prince or gain time, dispatched messengers to convey the young prisoner to the castle of Rouen. Arthur was soon forced from the good Hubert, of whom he had never stood in greater need than then, carried away by night and lodged in his new prison, where, through his grated window, he could hear the deep waters of the River Seine, rippling against the stone wall below. One dark night, as he lay sleeping, dreaming, perhaps, of rescue by those unfortunate gentlemen who were obscurely suffering and dying in his cause, he was roused, and bitten by his jailer to come down the staircase to the foot of the tower. He hurriedly dressed himself and obeyed. When they came to the bottom of the winding stairs, and the night air from the river blew upon their faces, the jailer trod upon his torch and put it out. Then Arthur, in the darkness, was hurriedly drawn into a solitary boat, and in that boat he found his uncle and one other man. He knelt to them, and prayed them not to murder him. Deaf to his entreaties, they stabbed him, and sunk his body in the river with heavy stones. When the spring morning broke, the tower door was closed, the boat was gone, the river sparkled on its way, and nevermore was any trace of the poor boy beheld by mortal eyes. The news of this atrocious murder being spread in England awakened a hatred of the King, already odious for his many vices and for his having stolen away and married a noble lady while his own wife was living, that never slept again through his whole reign. In Brittany the indignation was intense. Arthur's own sister Eleanor was in the power of John and shut up in a convent at Bristol, but his half-sister Alice was in Brittany. The people chose her, and the murdered Prince's father-in-law, the last husband of Constance to represent them, and carried their fiery complaints to King Philip. King Philip summoned King John, as the holder of territory in France, to come before him and defend himself. King John refusing to appear, King Philip declared him false, perjured, and guilty, and again made war. In a little time, by conquering the greater part of his French territory, King Philip deprived him of one-third of his dominions. And through all the fighting that took place, King John was always found, either to be eating and drinking like a gluttonous fool when the danger was at a distance, or to be running away like a beaten kerr when it was near. You might suppose that when he was losing his dominions at this rate, and when his own nobles cared so little for him or his cause that they plainly refused to follow his banner out of England, he had enemies enough. But he made another enemy of the Pope, which he did in this way. The archbishop of Canterbury dying, and the junior monks of that place wishing to get the start of the senior monks in the appointment of his successor, met together at midnight, and eventually elected a certain reginald, and sent him off to Rome to get the Pope's approval. The senior monks and the king soon finding this out, and being very angry about it, the junior monks gave way, and all the monks together elected the Bishop of Norwich, who was the king's favourite. The Pope, hearing the whole story, declared that neither election would do for him, and that he elected Stephen Langton. The monks submitting to the Pope, the king turned them all out bodily and banished them as traitors. The Pope sent three bishops to the king to threaten him with an interdict. The king told the bishops that if any interdict was laid upon his kingdom, he would tear out the eyes and cut off the noses of all the monks he could lay hold of, and send them over to Rome in that undecorated state as a present for their master. The bishops, nevertheless, soon published the interdict, and fled. After it had lasted a year, the Pope proceeded to his next step, which was excommunication. King John was declared excommunicated with all the usual ceremonies. The king was so incensed at this, and was made so desperate by the disaffection of his barons and the hatred of his people, that it is said he even privately sent ambassadors to the Turks in Spain, offering to renounce his religion, and hold his kingdom of them if they would help him. It is related that the ambassadors were admitted to the presence of the Turkish emir through long lines of Moorish guards, and that they found the emir with his eyes seriously fixed on the pages of a large book, from which he never once looked up, that they gave him a letter from the king containing his proposals, and were gravely dismissed, that presently the emir sent for one of them, and conjured by him by his faith in his religion to say what kind of a man the King of England truly was, that the ambassador thus pressed replied that the King of England was a false tyrant against whom his own subjects would soon rise, and that was quite enough for the emir. Money being in his position the next best thing to men, King John spared no means of getting it. He set on foot another oppressing and torturing of the unhappy Jews, which was quite in his way, and invented a new punishment for one wealthy Jew of Bristol. Until such a time as that you should produce a certain large sum of money, the King sentenced him to be imprisoned, and every day to have one tooth violently wrenched out of his head, beginning with the double teeth. For seven days the oppressed man bore the daily pain and lost the daily tooth, but on the eighth he paid the money. With the treasure raised in such ways the King made an expedition into Ireland, where some English nobles had revolted. It was one of the very few places from which he did not run away, because no resistance was shown. He made another expedition into Wales, whence he did run away in the end, but not before he had got from the Welsh people as hostages, twenty-seven young men of the best families, every one of whom he caused to be slain in the following year. To interdict and excommunication the Pope now added his last sentence, deposition. He proclaimed John no longer King, absolved all subjects from their allegiance, and sent Stephen Langton and others to the King of France to tell him that, if he would invade England, he should be forgiven all his sins, at least should be forgiven them by the Pope, if that would do. As there was nothing that King Philip desired more than to invade England, he collected a great army at Rouen, and a fleet of seventeen hundred ships to bring them over. But the English people, however bitterly they hated the King, were not a people to suffer invasion quietly. They flocked to Dover, where the English standard was, in such great numbers to enroll themselves as defenders of their native land, that there were not provisions for them, and the King could only select and retain sixty thousand. But at this crisis the Pope, who had his own reasons for objecting to either King John or King Philip being too powerful, interfered. He entrusted a legate, whose name was Pandolf, with the easy task of frightening King John. He sent him to the English camp from France to terrify him with exaggerations of King Philip's power, and his own weakness in the discontent of the English barons and people. Pandolf discharged his commission so well that King John, in a wretched panic, consented to acknowledge the Stephen Langton, to resign his kingdom to God, Saint Peter and Saint Paul, which meant the Pope, and to hold it ever afterwards by the Pope's leave, on payment of an annual sum of money. To this shameful contract, he publicly bound himself in the Church of the Knights Templars at Dover, where he laid at the legate's feet a part of the tribute, which the legate totally trampled upon. But they do say that this was merely a gentile flourish, and that he was afterwards seen to pick it up and pocket it. There was an unfortunate prophet, the name of Peter, who had greatly increased King John's terrors by predicting that he would be unknighted, which the King supposed to signify that he would die before the Feast of the Ascension shall be passed. That was the day after this humiliation. When the next morning came and the King, who had been trembling all night, found himself alive and safe, he ordered the prophet and his son, too, to be dragged through the streets of the Tales of Horses, and then hanged, for having frightened him. As King John had now submitted, the Pope, to King Philip's greatest honnishment, took him under his protection, and informed King Philip that he found he could not give him leave to invade England. The angry Philip resolved to do it without his leave, but he gained nothing and lost much for the English, commanded by the Earl of Salisbury, went over in five hundred ships to the French coast, before the French fleet had sailed away from it, and utterly defeated the whole. The Pope then took off his three sentences one after another, and empowered Stephen Langton publicly to receive King John into the favour of the church again, and to ask him to dinner. The King, who hated Langton with all his might and main, and with reason, too, for he was a great and good man, with whom such a King could have no sympathy, pretended to cry and to be very grateful. There was a little difficulty about settling how much the King should pay as a recompense to the clergy for the losses he'd caused them, but the end of it was that the superior clergy got a good deal, and the inferior clergy got little or nothing, which has also happened since King John's time, I believe. When all these matters were arranged, the King in his triumph became more fierce and false and insolent to all around him than he had ever been. An alliance of sovereigns against King Philip gave him an opportunity of landing an army in France, with which he even took a town, but on the French King's gaining a great victory he ran away, of course, and made a truce for five years. And now the time approached, when he was to be still further humbled, and made to feel if he could feel anything what a wretched creature he was. Of all men in the world Stephen Langton seemed raised up by heaven to oppose and subdue him. When he ruthlessly burnt and destroyed the property of his own subjects, because their lords, the barons, would not serve him a reward, Stephen Langton fearlessly reproved and threatened him. When he swore to restore the laws of King Edward, or the laws of King Henry I, Stephen Langton knew his falsehood, and to pursued him through all his evasions. When the barons met at the Abbey of St. Edmundsbury to consider their wrongs and the King's oppressions, Stephen Langton roused them by his fervid words to demand a solemn charter of rights and liberties from their perjured master, and to swear, one by one, on the high altar that they would have it, or would wage war against him to the death. When the King hid himself in London from the barons, and was at last obliged to receive them, they told him roundly that they would not believe him unless Stephen Langton became sure that he would keep his word. When he took the cross to invest himself with some interest and belong to something that was received with favour, Stephen Langton was still immovable. When he appealed to the Pope, and the Pope wrote to Stephen Langton in behalf of his new favourite, Stephen Langton was deaf, even to the Pope himself, and saw before him nothing but the welfare of England, and the crimes of the English King. At Easter time the barons assembled at Stamford in Lincolnshire in proud array, and marching near to Oxford where the King was, delivered into the hands of Stephen Langton and two others a list of grievances. And these, they said, he must redress, or we will do it for ourselves. When Stephen Langton told the King as much, and read the list to him, he went half mad with rage. But that did him no more good than his afterwards trying to pacify the barons with lies. They called themselves and their followers the Army of God and the Holy Church. Marching through the country, with the people thronging to them everywhere, except at Northampton where they failed in an attack upon the castle, they at last triumphantly set up their banner in London itself. Wither the whole land, tired of the tyrant, seemed to flock to join them. Seven knights alone, of all the knights in England, remained with the King who, reduced to this straight, at last sent the Earl of Pembroke to the barons to say that he approved of everything, and would meet them to sign their charter when they would. Then, said the barons, let the day be the 15th of June, and the place Runnymede. On Monday, the 15th of June, 1214, the King came from Windsor Castle, and the barons came from the town of Staines, and they met on Runnymede, which is still a pleasant meadow by the Thames, where rushes grow in the clear water of the winding river, and its banks are green with grass and trees. On the side of the barons came the general of their army, Robert Fitzwalter, and a great concourse of the nobility of England. With the King came, in all some four and twenty persons of any note, most of whom despised him, and were merely his advisers in form. On that great day, and in that great company, the King signed Magna Charter, the Great Charter of England, by which he pledged himself to maintain the church in its rights, to relieve the barons of oppressive obligations as vassals of the crown, of which the barons in their turn pledged themselves to relieve their vassals, the people, to respect the liberties of London and all other cities and butters, to protect foreign merchants who came to England, to imprison no man without a fair trial, and to sell, delay, or deny justice to none. As the barons knew his falsehood well, they further required, as their securities, that he should send out of his kingdom all his foreign troops, that for two months they should hold possession of the city of London, and Stephen Langton of the Tar, and that five and twenty of their body, chosen by themselves, should be a lawful committee to watch the keeping of the Charter, and to make war upon him if he broke it. All this he was obliged to yield. He signed the Charter with a smile, and, if he could have looked agreeable, would have done so, as he departed from the splendid assembly. When he got home to Windsor Castle, he was quite a madman in his helpless fury, and he broke the Charter immediately afterwards. He sent abroad for foreign soldiers, and sent to the Pope for help, and plotted to take London by surprise, while the barons should be holding a great tournament at Stamford, which they had agreed to hold there as the celebration of the Charter. The barons, however, found him out, and put it off. Then, when the barons desired to see him and tax him with his treachery, he made numbers of appointments with them, and kept none, and shifted from place to place, and was constantly sneaking and skulking about. At last he appeared at Dover to join his foreign soldiers of whom numbers came into his pay, and with them he besieged and took Rochester Castle, which was occupied by knights and soldiers of the barons. He would have hanged them every one, but the leader of the foreign soldiers, fearful of what the English people might afterwards do to him, interfered to save the knights. Therefore the king was feigned to satisfy his vengeance with the death of all the common men. Then he sent the Earl of Salisbury with one portion of his army to ravage the eastern part of his own dominions, while he carried fire and slaughter into the northern part, torturing, plundering, killing, and inflicting every possible cruelty upon the people, and every morning setting a worthy example to his men by setting fire, with his own monster hands, to the house where he had slept last night. Nor was this all for the pope, coming to the aid of his precious friend, laid the kingdom under an interdict again, because the people took part with the barons. It did not much matter for the people of Grane so used to it now that they began to think nothing about it. It occurred to them, perhaps to Stephen Langton too, that they could keep their churches open and ring their bells without the pope's permission, as well as with it. So they tried the experiment, and found that it succeeded perfectly. It being now impossible to bear the country, as a wilderness of cruelty, or longer to hold any terms with such a forceful outlaw of a king, the barons sent to Louis, son of the French monarch, to offer him the English crown, caring as little for the pope's excommunication of him as he accepted the offer, as it is possible his father may have cared for the pope's forgiveness of his sins, he landed at Sandwich. King John immediately running away from Dover, where he happened to be, and went on to London. The Scottish king, with whom many of the northern English lords had taken refuge, numbers of the foreign soldiers, numbers of the barons, and numbers of the people, went over to him every day. King John, the while, continually running away in all directions. The career of Louis was checked, however, by the suspicions of the barons, founded on the dying declaration of a French lord, that when the kingdom was conquered he was sworn to banish them as traitors, and to give their estates to some of his own nobles. Rather than suffer this, some of the barons hesitated. Others even went over to King John. It seemed to be the turning point of King John's fortunes, for in his savage and murderous course he had now taken sometimes and met with some success, but happily for England and humanity his death was near. Crossing a dangerous quicksand, called the Wash, not very far from Whisbych, the tide came up and nearly dried his army. He and his soldiers escaped, but looking back from the shore when he was safe, he saw the roaring water sweep down in a torrent, overturned the wagons, horses and men that carried his treasure, and engulfed them in a raging whirlpool from which nothing could be delivered. Cursing and swearing, annoying his fingers, he went on to Swinestead Abbey, where the monks set before him quantities of pears and peaches and new cider—some say poison too, but there is very little reason to suppose so—of which he ate and drank in an immoderate and beastly way. All night he lay ill of a burning fever and haunted with horrible fears. Next day they put him in a horse-litter and carried him to sleep at Castle, where he passed another night of pain and horror. Next day they carried him, with greater difficulty than on the day before, to the Castle of Newark upon Trent, and there, on the eighteenth of October, in the forty-ninth year of his age, and the seventeenth of his vile reign, was an end of this miserable brute. END OF CHAPTER XIV England, under Henry III, called of Winchester. If any of the English barons remembered the murdered Arthur's sister, Eleanor, the fair maid of Brittany, shut up in her convent at Bristol. None among them spoke of her now, or maintained her right to the crown. The dead usurper's eldest boy, Henry by name, was taken by the Earl of Pembroke, the Marshal of England, to the city of Glodchester, and their crowned in great haste when he was only ten years old. As the crown itself had been lost with the King's treasure in the raging water, and as there was no time to make another, they put a circle of plain gold upon his head instead. We have been the enemies of this child's father, said Lord Pembroke, a good and true gentleman, to the few lords who were present, and he merited our ill will. But the child himself is innocent, and his youth demands our friendship and protection. Those lords felt tenderly towards the little boy, remembering their own young children, and they bowed their heads and said, Long live King Henry III! Next a great council met at Bristol, revised Magna Charter, and made Lord Pembroke regent or protector of England, as the King was too young to reign alone. The next thing to be done was to get rid of Prince Louis of France, and to win over those English barons who were still ranged under his banner. He was strong in many parts of England and in London itself, and he held, among other places, a certain castle called the Castle of Mount Surrell in Leicestershire. To this fortress, after some skirmishing and truce-making, Lord Pembroke laid siege. Louis dispatched an army of six hundred knights and twenty thousand soldiers to relieve it. Lord Pembroke, who was not strong enough for such a force, retired with all his men. The army of the French Prince, which had marched there with fire and plunder, marched away with fire and plunder, and came in a boastful swaggering manner to Lincoln. The town submitted that the castle in the town, held by a brave widow lady, named Nicola de Canville, whose property it was, made such a sturdy resistance that the French Count, in command of the army of the French Prince, found it necessary to besage this castle. While he was thus engaged, word was brought to him that Lord Pembroke, with four hundred knights, two hundred and fifty men, with crossbows, and a stout force, both of horse and foot, was marching towards him. What care I, said the French Count, the Englishman is not so mad as to attack me and my great army in a walled town. But the Englishman did it for all that, and did it not so madly, but so wisely, that he decoyed the great army into the narrow, ill-paved loans and byways of Lincoln, where its horse soldiers could not ride in any strong body, and there he made such havoc with them that the whole force surrendered themselves, prisoners, except the Count, who said that he would never yield to any English traitor alive, and accordingly got killed. The end of this victory, which the English called for a joke, the fear of Lincoln, was the usual one in those times, the common men were slain without any mercy, and the knights and gentlemen paid ransom and went home. The wife of Louis, the fair blanche of Castile, dutifully equipped a fleet of eighty good ships, and sent it over from France to her husband's aid. An English fleet of forty ships, some good and some bad, gallantly met them near the mouth of the Thames, and took, or sunk, sixty-five in one fight. This great loss put an end to the French prince's hopes. A treaty was made at Lambeth, in virtue of which the English barons, who had remained attached to his cause, returned to their allegiance, and it was engaged on both sides, that the prince and all his troops should retire peacefully to France. It was time to go, for war had made him so poor, that he was obliged to borrow money from the citizens of London, to pay his expenses home. Lord Pembroke afterwards applied himself to governing the country justly, and to healing the quarrels and disturbances that had arisen among men, in the days of the bad King John. He caused Magna Charter to be still more improved, and so amended the forest laws, that a peasant was no longer put to death for killing a stag in a royal forest, that was only imprisoned. It would have been wealth that England, if it could have had so good a protector many years longer, but there was not to be. Within three years after the young King's coronation, Lord Pembroke died, and you may see his tomb at this day, in the old temple church in London. The protectorship was now divided. Peter de Roches, whom King John had made bishop of Winchester, was entrusted with the care of the person of the young sovereign, and the exercise of the royal authority was confided to Earl Hubert de Beurre. These two personages had from the first no liking for each other, and soon became enemies. When the young King was declared of age, Peter de Roches, finding that Hubert increased in power and favour, retired discontentedly, and went abroad. For nearly ten years afterwards, Hubert had full sway alone. But ten years is a long time to hold the favour of the King. This King too, as he grew up, showed a strong resemblance to his father in feebleness, inconsistency, and irresolution. The best that can be said of him is that he was not cruel. De Roches coming home again after ten years, and being a novelty, the King began to favour him and to look coldly on Hubert. Wanting money besides and having made Hubert rich, he began to dislike Hubert. At last he was made to believe, or pretended to believe, that Hubert had misappropriated some of the royal treasure, and ordered him to furnish an account of all he had done in his administration. Besides which, the foolish charge was brought against Hubert, that he had made himself the King's favourite by magic. Hubert very well knowing that he could never defend himself against such nonsense, and that his old enemy must be determined on his ruin, instead of answering the charge's fled to Merton Abbey. Then the King, in a violent passion, sent for the Mayor of London, and said to the Mayor, take twenty thousand citizens and drag me Hubert de Beurre out of that Abbey, and bring him here. The Mayor posted off to do it, but the Archbishop of Dublin, who was a friend of Hubert's, warning the King that an Abbey was a sacred place, and that if he committed any violence there, he must answer for it to the Church. The King changed his mind and called the Mayor back, and declared that Hubert should have four months to prepare his defence, and should be safe and free during that time. Hubert, who relied upon the King's word, though I think he was old enough to have known better, came out of Merton Abbey upon these conditions, and journeyed away to see his wife, a Scottish Princess, who was then at St Edmundsbury. Almost as soon as he had departed from the sanctuary, his enemies persuaded the weak King to send out one Sir Godfrey de Crancombe, who commanded three hundred vagabonds called the Black Band, with orders to seize him. They came up with him at a little town in Essex called Brentwood, when he was in bed. He leaped out of bed, got out of the house, fled to the Church, ran up to the altar and laid his hand upon the cross. Sir Godfrey and the Black Band, caring neither for Church, altar nor cross, dragged him forth to the Church door, with their drawn swords flashing round his head, and sent for a smith to rivet a set of chains upon him. When the smith, I wish I knew his name, was fraught, all dark and swarthy, with the smoke of his forge, and panting with the speed he had made, and the Black Band, falling aside to show him, the prisoner, cried with a loud uproar, make the fetters heavy, make them strong. The smith dropped upon his knee, but not to the Black Band, and said, this is the brave Earl Hubert de Bour, who fought at Dover Castle, and destroyed the French fleet, and has done his country much good service. You may kill me if you like, then I will never make a chain for Earl Hubert de Bour. The Black Band never blushed, nor they might have blushed at this. They knocked the smith about from one to another, and swore at him, and tied the Earl on horseback, undressed as he was, and carried him off to the Tower of London. The bishops, however, were so indignant at the violation of the sanctuary of the Church, that the frightened King soon ordered the Black Band to take him back again, at the same time commanding the Sheriff of Essex to prevent his escaping out of Brentwood Church. Well, the Sheriff dug a deep trench all round the Church, and erected a high fence, and watched the Church night and day. The Black Band and their Captain watched a two, like three hundred and one Black Walls. For thirty-nine days Hubert de Bour remained within. At length, upon the fortieth day, cold and hunger were too much for him, and he gave himself up to the Black Band, who carried him off for the second time to the Tower. When his trial came on, he refused to plead, but at last it was arranged that he should give up all the royal lands which had been bestowed upon him, and should be kept at the Castle of Devilsus, in what was called Free Prison, in charge of four nights appointed by four lords. There he remained almost a year, until, learning that a follower of his old enemy, the Bishop, was made Keeper of the Castle, and, fearing that he might be killed by treachery, he climbed the ramparts one dark night, dropped from the top of the High Castle Wall into the moat, and, coming safely to the ground, took refuge in another church. From this place he was delivered by a party of horse dispatched to his help by some nobles, who were by this time in revolt against the King, and assembled in Wales. He was finally pardoned and restored to his estates, that he lived privately, and never more aspired to a high post in the realm, or to a high place in the King's favour. And thus end, more happily, than the stories of many favourites of kings, the adventures of Earl Hubert de Boer. The nobles, who had risen in revolt, were stirred up to rebellion by the overbearing conduct of the Bishop of Winchester, who, finding that the King secretly hated the Great Charter, which had been forced from his father, did his utmost to confirm him in that dislike, and in the preference he showed to foreigners over the English. Of this, and of his even publicity declaring that the barons of England were inferior to those of France, the English lords complained with such bitterness that the King, finding them well supported by the clergy, became frightened for his throne, and sent away the Bishop and all his foreign associates. On his marriage, however, with Eleanor, a French lady, the daughter of the Count of Provence, he openly favoured the foreigners again, and so many of his wife's relations came over, and made such an immense family party a court, and got so many good things, and pocketed so much money, and were so high with the English whose money they pocketed, that the bolder English barons murmured openly about a clause there was in the Great Charter, which provided for the banishment of unreasonable favourites. But the foreigners only laughed disdainfully, and said, what are your English laws to us? King Philip of France had died, and had been succeeded by Prince Louis, who had also died after a short reign of three years, and had been succeeded by his son of the same name, so moderate and just a man that he was not the least in the world like a king, as kings went. Isabella, King Henry's mother, wished very much for a certain spite she had, that England should make war against this king, and as King Henry was a mere puppet in anybody's hands who knew how to manage his feebleness, she easily carried her point with him. But the parliament were determined to give him no money for such a war. So, to defy the parliament, he packed up thirty large casks of silver. I don't know how he got so much. I daresay he screwed it out of the miserable Jews, and put them aboard ship, and went away himself to carry war into France, accompanied by his mother and his brother Richard, Earl of Cornwall, who was rich and clever. But he only got well-beaten and came home. The good humour of the parliament was not restored by this. They reproached the king with wasting the public money to make greedy foreigners rich, and were so stern with him, and so determined not to let him have more of it to waste if they could help it, that he was at his wit's end for some, and tried so shamelessly to get all he could from his subjects, by excuses or by force, that the people used to say the king was the sturdiest beggar in England. He took the cross, thinking to get some money by that means. But, as it was very well known that he never meant to go on a crusade, he got none. In all this contention, the Londoners were particularly keen against the king, and the king hated them warmly in return. Hating or loving, however, made no difference. He continued in the same condition for nine or ten years. When at last the baron said that if he would solemnly confirm their liberties afresh, the parliament would vote him a large sum. As he readily consented, there was a great meeting held in Westminster Hall, one pleasant day in May, when all the clergy, dressed in their robes, and holding every one of them a burning candle in his hand, stood up, the barons being also there, while the Archbishop of Canterbury read the sentence of excommunication against any man, and all men, who should henceforth, in any way, infringe the great charter of the kingdom. When he had done, they all put out their burning candles, with a curse upon the soul of any one, and every one, who should merit that sentence. The king concluded with an oath to keep the charter, as I am a man, as I am a Christian, as I am a knight, as I am a king. It was easy to make oaths, and easy to break them, and the king did both, as his father had done before him. He took to his old courses again when he was supplied with money, and soon cured of their weakness, the few who had ever really trusted him. When his money was gone, and he was once more burrowing and begging everywhere with the meanness worthy of his nature, he got into a difficulty with the Pope respecting the crown of Sicily, which the Pope said he had a right to give away, and which he offered to King Henry for his second son, Prince Edmund. But if you or I give away what we have not got, and what belongs to somebody else, it is likely that the person to whom we give it, will have some trouble in taking it. It was exactly so in this case. It was necessary to conquer the Sicilian crown, before it could be put upon. Young Edmund's head. It could not be conquered without money. The Pope ordered the clergy to raise money. The clergy, however, were not so obedient to him as usual. They had been disputing with him for some time about his unjust preference, of Italian priests, in England, and they had begun to doubt whether the king's chaplain, whom he allowed to be paid for preaching in 700 churches, could possibly be, even by the Pope's favour, in 700 places at once. The Pope and the king together, said the Bishop of London, may take the mitre off my head. But if they do, they will find that I shall put on a soldier's helmet. I pay nothing. The Bishop of Worcester was as bold as the Bishop of London, and would pay nothing either. Such sums as the more timid or the more helpless of the clergy did raise were squandered away, without doing any good to the king, or bringing the Sicilian crown an engineer to Prince Edmund's head. The end of the business was, that the Pope gave the crown to the brother of the king of France, who conquered it for himself, and sent the king of England in a bill of £100,000 for the expenses of not having won it. The king was now so much distressed that we might almost pity him, if it were possible to pity a king so shabby and ridiculous. His clever brother, Richard, had bought the title of King of the Romans, from the German people, and was no longer near him to help him with advice. The clergy, resisting the very Pope, were in alliance with the Barons. The Barons were headed by Simon de Monfort, Earl of Leicester, married to King Henry's sister, and though a foreigner himself, the most popular man in England against the foreign favourites. When the king next met his parliament, the Barons, led by this Earl, came before him, armed from head to foot, and cased in armour. When the parliament again assembled, in a month's time, at Oxford, this Earl was at their head, and the king was obliged to consent, on oath, to what was called a Committee of Government, consisting of twenty-four members, twelve chosen by the Barons, and twelve chosen by himself. But, at a good time for him, his brother Richard came back. Richard's first act, the Barons would not admit him into England on other terms, was to swear to be faithful to the Committee of Government, which he immediately began to oppose with all his might. Then the Barons began to quarrel among themselves, especially the proud Earl of Glochester, with the Earl of Leicester, who went abroad in disgust. Then the people began to be dissatisfied with the Barons, because they did not do enough for them. The king's chances seemed so good again at length, that he took heart enough, or caught it from his brother, to tell the Committee of Government, that he abolished them as to his oath. Never mind that, the Pope said, and to seize all the money in the mint, and to shut himself up in the Tower of London. Here he was joined by his eldest son, Prince Edward, and from the Tower he made public a letter of the Popes to the world in general, informing all men that he had been an excellent and just king for five and forty years. As everybody knew he had been nothing of the sort, nobody cared much for this document. It's so chanced that the proud Earl of Glochester dying was succeeded by his son, and that his son, instead of being the enemy of the Earl of Leicester, was, for the time, his friend. It fell out, therefore, that these two earls joined their forces, took several of the royal castles in the country, and advanced as hard as they could on London. The London people, always opposed to the king, declared for them with great joy. The king himself remained shut up, not at all gloriously in the Tower. Prince Edward made the best of his way to Windsor Castle. His mother, the Queen, attempted to follow him by water, but the people seeing her barge rowing up the river, and hated her with all their hearts, ran to London Bridge, got together a quantity of stones and mud, and pelted the barge as it came through, crying furiously, drown the witch, drown her. They were so near doing it that the mare took the old lady under his protection, and shut her up in St Paul's until the danger was passed. It would require a great deal of writing on my part, and a great deal of reading on yours, to follow the king through his disputes with the barons, and to follow the barons through their disputes with one another. So I will make short work of it for both of us, and only relate the cheap events that arose out of these quarrels. The good king of France was asked to decide between them. He gave it as his opinion that the king must maintain the great charter, and that the barons must give up the committee of government, and all the rest that had been done by the parliament at Oxford, which the royalists, or king's party, scornfully called the mad parliament. The barons declared that these were not fair terms, and they would not accept them. Then they caused the great bell as St Paul's to be told, for the purpose of rousing up the London people, who armed themselves at the dismal sound, and formed quite an army in the streets. I am sorry to say, however, that instead of falling upon the king's party, with whom their quarrel was, they fell upon the miserable Jews, and killed at least 500 of them. They pretended that some of these Jews were on the king's side, and that they kept hidden in their houses, for the destruction of the people, a certain terrible composition called Greek fire, which could not be put out with water, but only burnt the fissure for it. What they really did keep in their houses was money, and this their cruel enemies wanted, and this their cruel enemies took, like robbers and murderers. The Earl of Leicester put himself at the head of these Londoners and other forces, and followed the king to Luz in Sussex, where he lay and camped with his army. Before giving the king's forces battle here, the Earl addressed his soldiers, and said that King Henry III had broken so many oaths, that he had become the enemy of God, and therefore they would wear white crosses on their breasts, as if they were a raid, not against a fellow Christian, but against a Turk. White crossed accordingly, they rushed into the fight. They would have lost the day, the king having on his side all the foreigners in England, and from Scotland, John Common, John Valleol and Robert Bruce, with all their men, but for the impatience of Prince Edward, who in his hot desire to have vengeance on the people of London, threw the whole of his father's army into confusion. He was taken prisoner, so was the king, so was the king's brother, the king of the Romans, and five thousand Englishmen were left dead upon the bloody grass. For this success, the Pope excommunicated the Earl of Leicester, which neither the Earl nor the people cared at all about. The people loved him and supported him, and he became the real king, having all the power of the government in his own hands, though he was outwardly respectful to King Henry III, whom he took with him wherever he went, like a poor old limp caught card. He summoned a parliament in the year 1265, which was the first parliament in England that the people had any real share in electing, and he drew more and more in favour with the people every day, and they stood by him in whatever he did. Many of the other barons, and particularly the Earl of Leicester, who had become by this time as proud as his father, grew jealous of this powerful and popular Earl, who was proud too, and began to conspire against him. Since the battle of Luz, Prince Edward had been kept as a hostage, and though he was otherwise treated like a prince, had never been allowed to go out without attendance appointed by the Earl of Leicester, who watched him. The conspiring lords found means to propose to him, in secret, that they should assist him to escape, and should make him their leader, to which he very heartily consented. So, on a day that was agreed upon, he said to his attendants after dinner, being then at Hereford, I should like to ride on horseback this fine afternoon, a little way into the country. As they too thought it would be very pleasant to have a canter in the sunshine, they all rode out of the town together, in a gay little troupe. When they came to a fine-level peace of turf, the prince fell to comparing their horses one with another, and offering vets that one was faster than another, and the attendants, suspecting no harm, rode galloping matches until their horses were quite tired. The prince rode no matches himself, but looked on from his saddle, and staked his money. Thus they passed the whole merry afternoon. Now the sun was setting, and they were all going slowly up a hill. The prince's horse, very fresh, and all the other horses, very weary, when a strange rider mounted on a grey steed, appeared at the top of the hill, and waved his hat. What does the fellow mean? said the attendants, one to another. The prince answered on the instant, by setting spurs to his horse, dashing away at his utmost speed, joining the man, riding into the midst of a little crowd of horsemen, who were then seen waiting under some trees, and who closed around him, and so he departed in a cloud of dust, leaving the road empty of all but the baffled attendants, who sat looking at one another, while their horses drooped their ears and panted. The prince joined the Earl of Glowchester at Ludlow, the Earl of Leicester, with the part of the army, and the stupid old king, was at Hereford. One of the Earl of Leicester's sons, Simon de Montfort, with another part of the army, was in Sussex. To prevent these two parts from uniting was the prince's first object. He attacked Simon de Montfort by night, defeated him, seized his banners and treasure, and forced him into Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire, which belonged to his family. His father, the Earl of Leicester, in the meanwhile, not knowing what had happened, marched out of Hereford, with his part of the army and the king to meet him. He came, on a bright morning in August, to Evesham, which is watered by the pleasant river Agon, looking rather anxiously across the prospect toward Kenilworth. He saw his own banners advancing, and his face brightened with joy. But it clouded darkly when he presently perceived that the banners were captured, and in the enemy's hands, and he said, It is over. The Lord have mercy on our souls, for our bodies are prince Edwards. He fought like a true knight, nevertheless. When his horse was killed under him, he fought on foot. It was a fierce battle, and the dead lay in heaps everywhere. The old king stuck up in a suit of armour on a big war horse, which didn't mind him at all, with which carried him into all sorts of places where he didn't want to go, got into everybody's way, and very nearly got knocked on the head by one of his son's men. That he managed to pipe out, I am Harry of Winchester, and the prince, who heard him, seized his bridle, and took him out of peril. The Earl of Leicester still fought bravely, until his best son, Henry, was killed, and the bodies of his best friends choked his path, and then he fell, still fighting, sword in hand. They mangled his body and sent it as a present to a noble lady, but a very unpleasant lady, I should think, who was the wife of his worst enemy. They could not mangle his memory in the minds of the faithful people though. Many years afterwards they loved him more than ever, and regarded him as a saint, and always spoke of him as Sir Simon the Righteous, and even though he was dead, the cause for which he had fought still lived, and was strong, and forced itself upon the king in the very hour of victory. Henry found himself obliged to respect the Great Charter, however much he hated it, and to make laws similar to the laws of the Great Earl of Leicester, and to be moderate and forgiving towards the people at last, even towards the people of London, who had so long opposed him. There were more risings before all this was done, but they were set at rest by these men, and Prince Edward did his best in all things to restore peace. Once Sir Adam de Gordon was the last dissatisfied knight in arms, but the prince vanquished him in a single combat in a wood, and nobly gave him his life, and became his friend, instead of slaying him. Sir Adam was not ungrateful, he ever afterwards remained devoted to his generous conqueror. When the troubles of the kingdom were thus calmed, Prince Edward and his cousin Henry took the cross, and went away to the Holy Land with many English lords and knights. Four years afterwards the king of the Romans died, and next year 1272, his brother the weak king of England died. He was 68 years old then, and had reigned 56 years. He was as much of a king in death as he had ever been in life. He was the mere pale shadow of the king at all times.