done secretly; but John himself excited suspicion by already evading some of the clauses of the charter.

The barons, in the joy of their triumph at Runnymead, had ap→ pointed a grand tournament to be held at Stamford; and John formed a plot to surprise London, where their chief strength lay, during their absence at this festival. A civil war followed, in which the barons had recourse to the assistance of the King of France; a circumstance that rendered the position of the country very critical. If John succeeded, it appeared likely that he would become a worse tyrant than he had been before; if the French king prevailed, England might become a province of France.

Louis, the son of Philip, landed at Sandwich on the 30th of May, 1216; and after committing great ravages in various parts of the country, marched to the capital, where he was joyfully received by both nobles and citizens.

After this he marched to Dover and laid siege to the castle, while some of the barons proceeded to the attack of Windsor; but both places were ably defended.

In the meantime John, after running from place to place, assembled his forces at Stamford, and soon after made himself master of Lincoln, whence he made predatory incursions into the surrounding districts. He then came southward to Lynn in Norfolk, everywhere marking his presence by flames, blood, and devastation.

As the siege of Windsor Castle had been raised, and several circumstances had appeared favourable for his prospects, John now resolved to turn again towards the north. For this purpose he endeavoured to cross the estuary of the Wash by the sands at low water; but not having understood the state of the tide, he was overtaken by it, and though he himself escaped, he lost his carriages, baggage, and treasure.

In mournful silence, broken only by curses and useless complaints, he travelled to the Cistercian Abbey of Swineshead.

Here he ate gluttonously of fruit, and drank immoderately of cider; and this excess, the effect of which was probably increased by an irritated mind, brought on fever. He passed a sleepless and agitated night, seeming to suffer from a kind of horror; and the next day with difficulty got as far as Newark, where, after sending for a confessor, he lay down to die. As he lay on his death-bed messengers arrived from some of the barons, who, disgusted with the arrogant conduct of the French prince Louis, proposed to return to their allegiance. But it was too late for John to take advantage of their proposal; the tyrant was now himself a victim to fever; and he died, committing, as he said, his soul to God, and his body to St. Wulstan.

The throne of England has never been disgraced by a monarch so depraved as John. He was a rebellious son to a fond father, the persecutor of a generous brother, an unfaithful husband, and the murderer of his innocent nephew.

Though sometimes crouching under the power of the priesthood with the most abject servility when they were stronger than himself, he was always ready to revile and outrage the defenceless; and he appears to have been entirely destitute even of the lowest form of religious feeling, and a wanton violator of the most solemn oaths.

In the events of his reign, however, as in many other instances, the wise ordering of Providence brought good out of evil; and his tyranny, which drove the oppressed barons into rebellion, led to their obtaining the Magna Charta, and laid the foundation of British freedom.

Such a result from the folly and wickedness of John may well lead us to exclaim "This also cometh from the Lord, who is wonderful in counsel and in working."

A.D.

REMARKABLE EVENTS OF THE PERIOD.

1068. Institution of the Curfew law.

1069. An insurrection in the north of England, and that part of the country reduced to a desert.

1074. Pope Gregory VII. forbids the marriage of priests.

1080. The Tower of London built by William, and a survey made of all the estates in England recorded in Domesday Book.

1095. A great council held at Clermont, in which the first Crusade is proposed.

1096. The departure of the first Crusaders.

1114. The Thames at London so dried up as to be only knee-deep between

the bridge and the Tower.

1118. The order of the Knights Templars instituted.

1137. A great fire in London, when the bridge was burnt down.

1177. Glass windows first used in England.

1181. The polarity of the magnet and its possible utility in navigation mentioned in some verses of a Troubadour poet at the court of the Emperor of Germany.

1189. The manufacture of linen practised in England.

CHAP. VIII.

THE RELIGION, LAWS, LITERATURE, ARTS, COMMERCE, MANNERS, INDUSTRY, ETC. OF THIS PERIOD.

Religion.-THE invasion of the Normans produced little change in the constitution of the English Church. A blind obedience to the Pope was as much a tenet of the Norman kings and monks as it had been of their predecessors; perhaps more so. The injunction of celibacy to the clergy, however, met with great opposition; and though canon after canon was promulgated, commanding married priests to put away their wives, and the single to remain so, little attention was paid to these ordinances. Many of the priests even openly refused to obey; and this party became so strong, that in a council held at Winchester in 1070, those of the secular clergy who had wives were allowed to keep them. At a later date a council was held in London to enforce the obligation of clerical celibacy; and ten canons were passed on the subject more severe than any hitherto promulgated; but they were found powerless against the laws of nature.

The Crusades, as they were called, from the cross worn by the warriors engaged in them, were wars carried on by the Christian nations of the west from the end of the eleventh century to the end of the thirteenth for the conquest of Palestine.

They had their origin in the practice of pilgrimages, which then prevailed extensively, and in which the Tomb of the Redeemer naturally became a principal object of attraction. Crowds of palmers had been in the habit of resorting to it, and, as many of these had met with ill-usage from the Saracens, the idea occurred of wresting Jerusalem from their hands.

Although indirectly productive of much ultimate benefit, these wars were at this period the plague of Europe and the scourge of Asia and Egypt, and caused the ruin of millions of families. To defray the expenses of them the rich often oppressed their vassals, and compelled them, in their poverty and despair, to enlist in a Crusade.

Those who joined in the Crusades were frequently invested by the Pope with privileges detrimental to the common rights of their neighbours. During their time of service they were exempt from all prosecution for debt; they paid no taxes, nor any interest for borrowed money; they had power to alienate their lands without the consent of their superior; they had full pardon for their sins, past, present, and future, confirmed to them by papal bulls; and

they felt assured that, if they met their death in the holy warfare, angels would bear their souls to heaven. The holiness and great merit of these undertakings served, in their opinion, to cover crimes of the greatest enormity; murders, robberies, and licentious outrages were everywhere committed by these so-called armies of Christ; and their line of march was marked by blood and devastation. Previous to their departure most of them disposed of their possessions; and, to secure the protection of Heaven, bequeathed large donations to the church and the convents. Abbots and monks often accompanied the troops as commanders, volunteers, or chaplains; and, being removed from all control, abandoned themselves to luxury and profligacy.

Four of these extraordinary expeditions belong to the period now under consideration; the first began in 1097, the second in 1147, the third in 1189, and the fourth in 1203. Though professedly religious enterprises, they produced less effect upon the religion of the age in which they were undertaken than upon the social condition of the people. Among the phenomena that sprung out of them none presented a more expressive type of their character than the religious orders of knighthood. The earliest and most distinguished of these were the Knights Hospitallers of St. John, and the Knights Templars; both of which acquired establishments and extensive possessions in this country soon after their institutions.

Laws. - The government and laws established in England by the Normans were both founded on the feudal system. According to this, the king was the supreme lord of landed property, the term feudal implying that any possession so called is held from another. The land was regarded as a species of benefice, for which the baron owed state services to the crown; and his vassal, services of a similar nature to him. The latter had to fight for his lord in war, as the lord had to defend the throne; and throughout the feudal monarchies a regular chain of subordination and service was established, which was attended with the grievous oppression of the body of the people.

They were daily exposed to the insults and exactions of the nobles whose vassals they were, and from whose oppressive jurisdiction it was dangerous for them to appeal.

The state of England at the death of William the Conqueror, who established the feudal law, is thus described by an historian of this period: 66 The Normans had now fully executed the wrath of Heaven upon the English. There was hardly one of that nation who possessed any power; they were all involved in servitude and sorrow, insomuch that to be called an Englishman was considered as a reproach. In those miserable times many oppressive taxes

and tyrannical customs were introduced. The king himself, when he had let his lands at their full value, if another tenant came and offered more, gave them to him who offered most. The great men were inflamed with such a rage for money, that they did not care by what means it was acquired. The more they talked of justice the more unjustly they acted. Those who were called justiciaries were the fountains of all iniquity. Sheriffs and judges, whose duty it was to pronounce righteous judgments, were the most cruel of all tyrants, and greater plunderers than thieves and robbers."

The prerogative of “ purveyance, as it was called, namely, the right possessed by the kings of England at this period of buying whatever they thought necessary for their courts or castles before any one else was served, was a source of great injury to the people.

The purveyors who attended the court often plundered and destroyed the whole country through which the king passed, and when they could not consume all the provisions in the houses they invaded they either sold or burnt them, and let loose their horses into the fields to destroy the corn.

The Saxon courts of justice were suffered to decline during this period, and the county court fell a few years after the Norman invasion by a stroke of despotism equally unjust and impolitic.

About the year 1085 the bishops and abbots were prohibited from sitting in them, and thereupon the lay noblemen thought it beneath their dignity to attend, and that hall of justice was gradually deserted. Courts were held in the monarch's palace for the trial of great causes and offences, and by the barons in the halls of their castles, where causes of a trivial nature were decided.

All these courts were corrupt; justice, or what passed for it, was bought and sold in them, and the Supreme Court of Judicature was open to none who did not bring presents. Money was demanded by the very barons of the Exchequer, and all the proceedings of these courts were ruled by gold. Large sums were paid by ladies for leave to marry, or still more frequently that they might not be forced to marry against their will; those who had money enough were allowed to compound for murders and other capital offences, but for those who had none there was no chance of escape.

The rigour of the Norman barons towards their vassals, and their licentious spirit, proved in the end favourable to general liberty, for the oppressed people looked up to the king for protection, and their support enabled the monarch to resist the encroachments of his nobles. The defects in the titles of some of the Norman kings, too, induced them to listen with more complaisance than they might otherwise have done to the complaints of their English subjects; and this again had the effect of rendering the