| 40. Innocent and Magna Charta. | ||||
An original manuscript of the Magna Charta, shrivelled with age and fire, but still showing the royal seal, is preserved in the British Museum. A facsimile is given in the official edition of the Statutes of the Realm. Stubbs gives the Latin text in Select Charters, etc., 296-306. | ||||
In his treatment of the Great Charter, the venerable instrument of English popular rights, Innocent, with monarchical instinct, turned to the side of John and against the cause of popular liberty. Stephen Langton, who had released John from the ban of excommunication, espoused the popular cause, thereby incurring the condemnation of the pope. The agreement into which the barons entered to resist the king's despotism was treated by him with delay and subterfuge. Rebellion and civil war followed. As he had before been unscrupulous in his treatment of the Church, so now to win support he made fulsome religious promises he probably had no intention of keeping. To the clergy he granted freedom of election in the case of all prelates, greater and less. He also made a vow to lead a crusade. After the battle of Bouvines, John found himself forced to return to England, and was compelled by the organized strength of the barons to meet them at Runnymede, an island in the Thames near Windsor, where he signed and swore to keep the Magna Charta, June 15, 1215. | ||||
This document, with the Declaration of Independence, the most important contract in the civil history of the English-speaking peoples, meant defined law as against uncertain tradition and the arbitrary will of the monarch. It was the first act of the people, nobles, and Church in combination, a compact of Englishmen with the king. By it the sovereign agreed that justice should be denied or delayed to no one, and that trial should be by the peers of the accused. No taxes were to be levied without the vote of the common council of the realm, whose meetings were fixed by rule. The single clause bearing directly upon the Church confirmed the freedom of ecclesiastical elections. | ||||
After his first paroxysms of rage, when he gnawed sticks and straw like a madman, John called to his aid Innocent, on the ground that he had attached his seal under compulsion. In fact, he had yielded to the barons with no intention of keeping his oath. The pope made the fatal mistake of taking sides with perjured royalty against the reasonable demands of the nation. In two bulls he solemnly released John from his oath, declaring that the enemy of the human race had, by his crafty arts, excited the barons against him. He asserted that the wicked audacity of the barons tended to the contempt of the Apostolic see, the detriment of kingly prerogative, the disgrace of the English nation, and the endangering of the cross. He praised John for his Christian submission to the will of the supreme head of Christendom, and the pledge of annual tribute, and for his vow to lead a crusade. As for the document itself, he utterly reprobated and condemned it as a low and base instrument, yea, truly wicked and deserving to be reprobated by all, especially because the king's assent was secured by force. Upon pain of excommunication he forbade its observance by the king, and pronounced it, null and void for all time. | ||||
The sentence of excommunication which Innocent fulminated against the refractory barons, Langton refused to publish. For his disobedience the pope suspended him from his office, Nov. 4, 1215, and he was not allowed to resume it till 1219, when Innocent had been in his grave three years. London, which supported the popular cause, was placed under the interdict, and the prelates of England who took the popular side Innocent denounced, as worse than Saracens, worse than those open enemies of the cross. | ||||
The barons, in self-defence, called upon the Dauphin of France to accept the crown. He landed in England, but was met by the papal ban. During the struggle Innocent died, but his policy was continued by his successor. Three months later, Oct. 19, 1216, John died at Newark, after suffering the loss of his goods in crossing the Wash. He was thrown into a fever, but the probable cause of his death was excess in eating and drinking. He was buried at his own request in Worcester cathedral. In his last moments he received the sacrament and commended his children to the protection of the pope, who had stood by him in his last conflict. | ||||