too—to be dragged through the streets at the
tails of horses, and then hanged, for having
frightened him.

As King John had now submitted, the
Pope, to King Philip's great astonishment,
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 a 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 had
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 abroad, Stephen Langton
fearlessly reproved and threatened him. When
he swore to restore the laws of King Edward,
or the laws of King Henry the First, Stephen
Langton knew his falsehood, and pursued him
through all his evasions. When the Barons
met at the abbey of Saint Edmund's-Bury,
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 they would not believe him
unless Stephen Langton became a surety 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
immoveable. When he appealed to the Pope,
and the Pope wrote to Stephen Langton in
behalf of his new favorite, 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, whither
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 strait, 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, Runny-
Mead."

On Monday, the fifteenth of June, one.
thousand two hundred and fourteen, the King
came from Windsor Castle, and the Barons
came from the town of Staines, and they met
on Runny-Mead, which is still a pleasant
meadow by the Thames, where rushes grow
in the clear waters 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 FITZ-WALTER, 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 CHARTA
—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 boroughs; 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