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,
secretly 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 favorite. 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 were
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 that 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 him,
by his faith in his religion, to say what kind
of 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 this 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 time as that Jew 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 his 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 enrol 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
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 haughtily trampled
upon. But they do say, that this was merely
a genteel flourish, and that he was afterwards
seen to pick it up and pocket it.

There was an unfortunate prophet, of 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 Ascension should be past. 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