A Chapter on the Charter.
Originally published in Saint Pauls (Virtue & Co.) vol.1 #3 (Dec 1867).
We broach no new doctrine, nor take an isolated position, when we say that much of the history—especially of the early and middle ages—of our country remains to be written. Our most trustworthy and painstaking historians have too credulously accepted the testimony of chroniclers who have written with the narrow animus of partisans, and have surveyed events and men through eyes so jaundiced by personal enmity and petty jealousy, that to many of these writings there cannot be accorded a higher level than to political pamphlets in the present day; and often the historians themselves, unable or not sufficiently diligent to prosecute their inquiries to a reliable basis, have summed up their own ignorance by stigmatising the people of the particular place and period as a race of barbarians of whom no records remain, or as the people of a dark age. Thanks to the patient industry of antiquarians, archæologists, and local historians, who are occupied within their own localities disentombing musty and forgotten records, unravelling the tangled web of family histories, and tracing their connection with the national story, reading the chronicles of mounds and monuments, and interpreting the voices of scattered relics,—thanks to these men, many of our received notions are being blown away, and it will soon be within the power of some master spirit, working amidst these materials, to pace firmly and confidently along, and write something more than a budget of unsatisfactory theories about our ancestors. Already we have conceded much of that obloquy which was wont to be showered down upon Cromwell, and we no longer stigmatise him as a designing tyrant seeking only his own elevation; whilst, on the other hand, we are beginning to see that notwithstanding the whitewash of Hume and Clarendon, no palliation can be offered for the character and conduct of the Stuarts; no one now-a-days, with any regard to his reputation as an historical authority, would commit himself to the term barbarous, as applied to our early ancestors, the ancient Britons; Richard III. has ceased to be the repulsive mental and physical deformity at which, as children, we were taught to shudder; to us Becket is no patriot, nor Hudibras an historian. We are opening our eyes to the fact that our established authorities, from Bede to Clarendon, are either voices from the cells of monks, whose world lay within the four walls of their domicile, or the prose minstrelsy of rewarded bards, glorifying the deeds of their patrons and blackening those of their opponents. Virgil, hampered by kind offices, gives to his patron a fame foretold in the days when Rome existed but in the creative will of the gods, and asserts that in the circling ages,
"Nascetur pulchra Trojanus origine Cæsar
Imperium oceano famam qui terminet astris
Julius a magno demissum nomen Iulo."—Æn. Lib. I. 286.
And so it was with historians in the early and middle ages. Writing under the wings of kings and princes, the only encouragers of the writer's art, they invariably tried to trace the power and position of their patron or hero to some masterstroke of providential wisdom and foresight, whilst his enemies are invariably huddled together to form a dark background, the more fully to contrast the glories of the great centre-piece.
We have another remark to make, and that in or to the writers of school histories. With all deference to the gentlemen recently so warmly engaged in the controversy about the Latin accidence, there is a subject of wider importance in our national educational system, of which the text-books are in a very unsatisfactory state. Nothing can be more worthless or absurd than the historical knowledge of the school-boys and girls of the present day. We dare venture to say that while at two-thirds of our schools the majority would be able to tell the exact numbers killed in all the important battles, and all the stories about the Black Prince and Cœur de Lion which are pure fiction, while they could tell how Alfred burnt the cakes, and William I. was so strong that no one could bend his bow or handle his sword, would perhaps know the position of the Barebones Parliament in history because it is an amusing name, and be able to repeat all the adventures of the old and young Chevaliers, they could tell nothing of our great social and political struggles, of charters won and principles advanced ; they know nothing of the martyrs of liberty, or the pioneers of freedom, nothing of those of our forefathers who sowed in tears and watered with their blood the germs of all that is contained in the proud boast, Civis Anglicanus sum; and if you spoke to them of such names as Langton, Moore, Pym, Hampden, and others, they would stare at you in blank silence. To them the teachings of history are of gaudy trapped warriors and deeds of prowess and mystery; of the greater struggles of their forefathers they know nothing. It is painful to notice how daily, in all classes of society, the consciousness of this poverty of historical knowledge is forced upon us. Nor are many of our leading professional examinations much more than a farce upon historical acquirements. The writer remembers some time ago having to pass a professional examination, and on the history paper being handed to him, the first question that met his eye was the old stock one, "Name three of the greatest generals, and your reason." Such is the trammelling effect of our text-books that, in what is looked upon as one of the most learned occupations of life, such trash goes to make up an examination in history.
When history becomes true to her high vocation, Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury (1207—1228), will stand out as the most prominent figure in the records of the Plantagenet line; and yet we shall be speaking within bounds if we say that he is, at the present day, the least known of all our country's benefactors, historians great and small having seemingly conspired to grant him honours as grudgingly as possible. Even Hallam, usually so rigidly just, has dismissed his services in a couple of lines.[1] It is his life, as bound up in the great foundation of English liberty, we propose briefly to trace in the present paper.
Whether we view Langton as a scholar, an ecclesiastic, or a statesman, we shall find him alike worthy of the best efforts of the biographer and the closest scrutiny of the student; but it is mainly as a statesman, disinterested amidst so much selfishness, generous amidst so much petty tyranny, pure amidst so many inducements to self-aggrandisement, morally brave amidst so much moral cowardice,—the counterpart in everything of his king,—that he merits a page in history. There is a great dearth of materials for the life of Langton, and his character is chronicled in great deeds rather than in the fulsome biographies of his contemporaries. The curtain of uncertainty first draws aside to reveal to us the young student at Paris, eminent as a poet, a biblical scholar, and a lawyer, and the friend of the future Innocent III. When the latter was called to the papal chair, probably influenced by the double motive of promoting the advancement of his friend, and at the same time wishing to strengthen his councils by having near him as a trusted adviser one of such great ability, of whose interest he was assured, he summoned Langton to Rome, in 1206, in order to confer upon him the office of cardinal-priest; but even before his induction into this office events were conspiring to call him to a still more elevated post. In July of the previous year, Hubert, Archbishop of Canterbury, died; and consequent thereon arose a quarrel as to the right of appointing a successor. The monks of Christchurch possessed the right of voting in the election of their archbishop, and some of the junior canons met secretly and nominated their sub-prior, Reginald. The king and the senior canons were enraged at this act of temerity in filling so important a post without their concurrence, and appointed the Bishop of Norwich; while the suffragans, forming a third body, dissented from both, and all three parties appealed to Rome. Various motives no doubt moved Innocent III. to set aside both elections, and prefer in their stead one who from continued intercourse he had found of unblemished probity, and who, from the masculine vigour of his mind, was capable of upholding the interests of the Church in this distant and at times somewhat refractory province, while his distinguished abilities would grace so high a position. Accordingly he directed the monks forming the deputations of appeal to make choice of Langton. After some demur, conquered by a threat of excommunication, they submitted; and in the following year (1207) Langton was consecrated Primate of England. There was little of auspicious promise in the tyrannical act by which Langton was thrust upon the English Church. He received his appointment by a stretch of prerogative which the best period of his life was bent upon opposing. It may be wondered that he should be willing to receive his appointment under these circumstances. But when we consider the doctrine of implicit obedience to the Father of the Church which he had been educated under, the probability that such a stretch of power was not uncommon at Rome, and the factious spirit in which the appeal was made, we can easily suppose that he saw nothing in the means to repel him from the end.
John, when informed of the conduct of the Pope, flew into a towering passion, and, with his usual blasphemy, swore by God's teeth that the appointment of the Bishop of Norwich should be completed and confirmed. He expelled the monks of Christchurch, and confiscated their revenues. Innocent, in retaliation, placed the country under an Interdict (1208), followed by excommunication of John (1209). Thus the struggle of threats and recriminations went on until 1212, when the Pope produced the forged decretals giving him power to depose a monarch for immoralities. He at once declared John to be deposed, gave the kingdom to Philip of France, and encouraged all Europe to join the league against him as a holy crusade. John, alarmed at the preparations of Philip, but still more by the intelligence of disaffection in his own army, submitted; and in May, 1213, did homage to Pandulph, the Pope's legate, agreeing to Langton's appointment, and resigning England and Ireland "to St. Peter and St. Paul, and to Pope Innocent and his successors in the apostolic chair." Under protection of this submission, and a warrant of safe conduct, Stephen Langton landed at Dover in July; and it is with his life for the next three years that our task primarily concerns itself,—it is now that we have the display of that broad catholic patriotism which in itself forms such a noble study.
Pending the controversy betwixt John and the Pope, Langton had taken up his residence at the monastery of Pontigny, where the tranquillity of the place called him to his books and studies, which, notwithstanding his participation in public affairs, were at once his most congenial pursuits and his favourite refuge. Pontigny had been the residence of Thomas A'Becket, on the occasion of his flight from Henry II., fifty years before; and this, coupled with the fact that Langton himself, from a mistaken estimate of Becket's character and a slight similarity of their positions, had elevated him into an ideal, has caused a comparison to be instituted between the two archbishops. But their characters are widely different. Becket was a proud, overbearing, bigoted churchman, ever attempting to elevate the ecclesiastical above the civil power, thus making the Church the refuge of crime and infamy. His concern for the Church was a mere exaggerated estimate of the necessity of great temporal power being placed in the hands of the Church. He lacked conciliation and discretion, and his displays of power were as offensive to good taste as they were nauseous to those who came within their range. His great principle seems to have been to make every one who came within his influence smart under a sense of inferiority, and in his proud insolence he once insisted upon the king holding his stirrup whilst he mounted his horse. Langton, on the contrary, was never a mere ecclesiastic; though primate of the Romish Church, he never forgot that he was an Englishman; though the first on the peerage-roll, that he was still a man; and thus, while he rejected unlimited power as the price of his desertion of the popular cause, in drafting the Charter he claims that the privileges granted to the knights in capite shall by them, in turn, be granted to their vassals and villeins.
While at Pontigny, Langton had been in correspondence with the English barons, who, roused by the rapacious exactions, the outrageous tyranny, and the unscrupulous conduct, both in public and private, of King John, had formed themselves into a league to resist his lawless practices, and check his villainies. With these barons Langton had taken counsel concerning the unhappy state of the country; he had been privy to that disaffection which had mainly induced the submission of John to the Pope; on them more than on the safe conduct of John he had relied for protection in England. And thus, when he landed in this country he found himself at the head of two great struggles which ultimately clashed in his person, and to some extent paralysed his powers,—he was not only the representative of the Pope claiming the supremacy of the Church, but the leader of a great party struggling for popular rights and liberties. Langton supplied what the barons most needed,—a head and a calm counsellor. The feudal system,—or rather that, coupled with the turmoil of Stephen's reign,—had engendered a universal distrust of each other amongst the barons; they were totally unused to act together, and had to learn that there was such a thing as unity of interest; but this they were fast learning under the tutorship of John. They were men perhaps of not very brilliant intellect, but of strong common-sense; more trained in the arts of war than the cavils of law, they knew little of jurisprudence, but they were conscious of defrauded rights, and were willing to die for them if they had but one to speak for them, to utter their complaints and demand their privileges. True, at first they were dubious and hesitant; their very instincts and every surrounding influence taught them that kingly prerogative was almost unlimited. Nor should we wonder that it needed more than ordinary courage to break loose from all their traditions,—to fight against the banner they had been wont to follow,—to lift the sword where they used to bend the knee. With what joy must they have hailed the advent of Langton, when he showed them that the rights they demanded were theirs by ancient charter, to be guarded by them as they valued their knightly oaths.
In his first public act we see how faithfully Langton fulfilled the duties of his double office, how while he exacted an oath of fealty to Innocent III., he, with a foresight not to be too highly appreciated, mindful of the future interests of the nation, compelled John to swear "that he would renew all the good laws of his ancestors, especially those of King Edward;[2] that he would annul bad ones, would judge his subjects according to the just decrees of his courts, and would restore his rights to each and all."[3] In the restitution—which followed this return of John to the bosom of the Church—of those who had suffered from the interdict by deprivation of their benefices, and by exile, Langton gave an indication of the independent course of resistance to oppression he intended to pursue, by siding with the poor clergy against the king, backed as he was in his wrong-doing by the Pope. Thus early did his two offices clash.
Received again into the Church, the disaffection at home lulled, all his apparent differences adjusted, John, in the pride of his regained power, resolved to punish his great rival, Philip of France. Having appointed a regent, he summoned his council and set out on his expedition. The council met shortly after the departure of the king, and here it was that Langton first openly assumed the leadership of the patriots, and in a later council (August, 1218) he bound the barons together with an oath, and placed a definite object before them by reminding them that in absolving the king he had made him promise to observe the good "laws of Edward the Confessor." And if this was not a sufficiently definite basis to claim redress upon, he produced that charter which Henry I. had granted immediately upon his succession to the throne in order to conciliate the people to his usurpation. The most important provisions of this charter were promises "to do away with all the evil practices with which the kingdom of England is now unjustly oppressed," and "to restore to you the law of King Edward, with the amendments[4] which my father by the advice of his barons made in it."[5] The production and reading of this almost forgotten charter spurred on the barons, rousing the greatest enthusiasm amongst them, and they unanimously vowed that they would wrest back with the sword a confirmation of this charter to their fathers. Proclamations were then issued in the name of the king, commanding the laws of Henry I. to be observed, and denouncing punishment against those tools of John who were still carrying out his policy. This strange course of proceeding was not long in reaching the ear of John, and in the following year he returned highly incensed, resolved to punish his audacious council, and nip in the bud this incipient rebellion.
In the spring of 1215, having assembled an army, he marched northwards, pillaging and destroying everything in his path. Langton with his retinue met him at Northampton, and sternly demanded an explanation of his conduct, and reminded him of his oath when he absolved him at Winchester, and said, "This barbarous violence is a direct breach of your oath. You are bound in the first place, if there is cause of offence, to summon the offenders to your courts, that they may be tried and judged by their peers." "Rule you the Church, and leave me to rule the State," was the king's infuriated reply, as he dismissed the primate. John continued the march, but Langton followed him, and loftily rebuked his conduct. John, finding that threats and harsh words were ineffective upon the prelate, wilily resolved upon bribery, and granted to the clergy a charter relinquishing to them the prerogative of free election on the occurrence of all vacancies. But he had to deal with a man as pure as he was brave; and as in the meanwhile the barons had assembled an army in every way superior to his own, and which they called "the army of God and the Holy Church," John saw no hope in open resistance, and consented to call a convocation of the barons, or, following the quaint language of the old historian, "The king finding the barons so resolute in their demands, was much concerned at their impetuosity. When he saw that they were furnished for battle, he replied that it was a great and difficult thing which they asked, from which he required a respite until after Easter, that he might have space for consideration; and if it were in the power of himself or the dignity of the Crown, they should receive satisfaction. But at length, after many proposals, the king unwillingly consented that the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Ely, and William Marshal (Earl of Pembroke) should be made sureties, and that by their intercession on the day fixed he would satisfy all."[6] In the meanwhile he sent to the Pope for protection. Innocent immediately and peremptorily ordered Langton to support John against the barons. Again his two offices clashed. But heedless of the mandate of the Pope, Langton encouraged the barons not to desist. On the appointed day the barons assembled, two thousand strong, with a long train of armed attendants. John, who kept a safe distance from them, sent to know their demands. A schedule, containing a recital of the laws, &c., they claimed, was handed to the deputation, and upon their presenting it to the king he answered, "Why do they not at once demand my crown? By God's teeth, no liberties shall be granted to those whose object is to make me their slave." In vain Langton and Pembroke advised the king to comply with the demand of his subjects; he appealed to his favourite arbitrator—arms—and fled to London. The barons accepted the appeal, and marched upon his castles, and on to London, their ranks swelling at every step, all classes flocking to the "army of God and the Church." Alarmed at their progress, the king agreed to a conference at Runymede, and named the 9th of June, afterwards postponed to the 15th. Thither on the appointed day came the contending parties, the barons with a countless number of retainers, Jobn with but seven followers, and there, after much negotiating, the "Articuli Magnæ Cartæ," afterwards expanded into "Magna Charta," received the royal seal, 15th June, 1215. History does not expressly inform us what hand drafted this great document, but there can be no doubt of it. One only of that immense throng of barons could have done it, and it remains to the present day a model piece of legislature. Jurists may cavil at its untechnical forms, critics may laugh at its rude Latinity, but nor jurists nor critics can deny its terseness, compactness, unambiguity, and sufficiency. There is no superfluity, nor anything wanting. And if Langton had done nothing more than to draft this document, he would have deserved the most kindly remembrance from his countrymen. But when we remember how, in spite of the greatest inducements to withdraw his support, he had preserved his integrity to this cause, how that he had prevented the great barons from being bought into desertion by a promise of great privileges to their order, and how he endangered his very position as primate by his fidelity, we begin to feel a deeper debt than mere words can repay. Without any wish to disparage or underrate the services of Pembroke and those other barons who co-operated with him, we do not speak unadvisedly when we say that without Langton's aid no deed so comprehensive as Magna Charta would have been obtained until a much later period, nor indeed would any charter at all have been obtained for many years. Had he merely taken a negative position, his very indifference would have paralysed them; but had he actively sided with John, the confederation must have inevitably been destroyed. We do not say but that concessions of some kind must have been made. The yoke was becoming too heavy to be borne. But those concessions would probably have been very bare. John, wily and cunning, had a thousand crafts against men less clear-sighted and trained in the ways of the world than Langton. Langton was to the people such a leader as none else could have been. His administrative abilities were of a high order; difficulties seemed to vanish under his touch, the most tortuous path opened up clear before his eye, every emergency was found provided for at. the critical moment;—there were the barons ready equipped to enforce the demand for a conference; there was the schedule of broken laws when asked for; and, above all, there was the broad comprehensive Charter, well pondered, and widely inclusive, when the time came to demand its acceptance. His powers of conciliation and of inspiring confidence were equally prominent. Of the necessity of his leadership to the barons we need no greater proof than subsequent events, when, on the recall of Langton to Rome, they were scattered before John like chaff before the wind.
Of the details of the Charter it is not our province to speak. A document so frequent on the tongues of all should surely be too well known to need quotation; and, merely endorsing the opinion of one of our historians, that no new principle of liberty has been infused into our Constitution since its date, but that every subsequent constitutional struggle has been fought round some one or other of its provisions, we resume the thread of our narrative.
John, we remarked, had appealed to the Pope, who, immediately that he heard of the extremity to which his now favourite vassal was pushed by his subjects, issued a Bull against them, of which the following is the essence:—"That the insolence of such men may not prevail, not only to the danger of the Church of England, but also to the ruin of other kingdoms, and above all to the subversion of all the matters of Christ, we . . . lay the fetters of excommunication on all the disturbers of the king and kingdom of England, as well as on all the accomplices and abettors of theirs, and place their possessions under the ecclesiastical interdict." Then follows an order to the archbishop and all the bishops to publicly proclaim and carry into force this punishment, with suspension as the penalty of their noncompliance. Langton, who had been previously summoned to a convention at Rome, having now seen the triumph of the popular cause, prepared for his departure, and had proceeded as far as Dover when he was met by Pandulph and the Bishop of Winchester, bearing this Bull, annulling the Charter, and excommunicating its authors. They imposed upon Langton the duty of reading it, and announced their orders to proclaim his suspension if he refused. He did refuse, and proceeded to Rome. He was coldly received by the Pope, and his temporary suspension confirmed. This in reality closes the career of Langton as a statesman. Once only again he appeared potentially; that was on his restoration, in 1218, when he assisted at the coronation of Henry III., and obtained the renewal of the Charter, with one or two important additions. Nor shall we impose upon ourselves the painful task of tracking the progress of liberty through the gloomy period that intervened betwixt his suspension and restoration. We know how John assembled an army of mercenaries, and, regardless of his kingly oath, marched through the country devastating, destroying, and pillaging, a course which drew from the old historian, Mathew of Paris, the despairing lament, "Alas, England! England, till now the chief of provinces, in all kinds of wealth, thou art a land under tribute; subject not only to fire, famine, and the sword, but to the rule of ignoble slaves and foreigners, than which no curse can be worse!" We know, too, how the barons, reduced to despair, offered the crown to Louis, the son of Philip, and the preparations for war that ensued; till John, worn out with disease and sickness, died at Newark, and thus prepared the way for an end to this chaotic disorder. But these events do not legitimately come within our present scope, except as illustrating the loss sustained in Langton. To attempt to say what would have been the result had Langton been permitted to remain, would of course be mere idle speculation, but it is more than probable that much of this unhappiness might have been prevented by his so doing.
As we have said, the public career of Langton terminated with the coronation ceremony of Henry III. The remainder of his life was passed in the almost unbroken performance of his ecclesiastical functions, and on the 9th of July, 1228, he quietly passed away from this life, in which he had played so noble and manly a part. Posterity will yet learn to do him justice, to love and reverence his memory, and to dwell on his name as a precious heritage. Slowly, as from other great names, the mists shall clear away, revealing to us the man in all his greatness,—one in that long chain of men who through dark hours have struggled for light, and towards the light, and the first who dared openly to teach the limitations of the king's prerogative.
1. "Middle Ages," vol. ii. p. 327.
2. "The people had begun to look back toa more ancient standard of law. The Norman conquest and all that had ensued upon it, had endeared the memory of their Saxon government. . . . Hence it became the favourite cry to demand the laws of Edward the Confessor. . . . But what these laws were, or more properly perhaps, these customs subsisting in the Confessor's age, was not very distinctly understood. . . . In claiming the laws of Edward the Confessor our ancestors meant but the redress of grievances which tradition told them had not always existed."—Hallam, Middle Ages, vol. ii. p. 324.
3. Roger of Wendover, p. 329.
4. The reference may probably be to that Charter of William the Conqueror which is well authenticated and runs thus: "We will, enjoin, and grant that all freemen of our kingdom shall enjoy their lands in peace, free from all tallage and from every unjust exaction, so that nothing but their service lawfully due to us shall be demanded at their hands."—See Hallam, Middle Ages, p. 323, and note xi. p. 415.
5. Mekins, p. 310.
6. Mathew Paris.