1202.] CAPTIVITY AND DEATH OF ARTHUR. 335 Philip again uses Arthur for the purposes of his own ambition. Constance, the duchess of Brittany, was now dead; and the young duke was sent by Philip into Poitou to head the insurrection against John. Arthur, the boy of fifteen, had a strong force of his own faithful Bretons with him, and the discontented nobles met him at Tours with their scanty band of followers. Eleanor, the old queen-mother, was at Mirabeau, near Poitiers. Arthur, with his little army, marched to seize the person of his grandmother, who had always been bitterly opposed to his pretensions. The wary Eleanor took refuge in the strong citadel. While the Poitevin army was besieging this fortress with little caution, John suddenly arrived with a powerful force; and the town was taken by surprise on the night of the 1st of August. Arthur was a prisoner, with two hundred nobles and knights who had followed his unhappy fortunes. Over the precise circumstances of the fate of Arthur there hangs a terrible mystery. At the beginning of the thirteenth century we have no contemporary chronicler, except Wendover. The later historians furnish us with very doubtful and imperfect notions of the death of the duke of Brittany. That Hubert de Burgh was commissioned to put out the eyes of Arthur, and that he forbore to commit that atrocity, rests upon the authority of one of these transmitters of popular tradition. Shakspere has made the legend an imperishable fact. Hubert was warden of the castle of Falaise, where the young prince was first confined. He was then moved, according to some writers, to Rouen. He suddenly vanished, says one, in a manner unknown to all. The king was suspected to have killed him with his own hand, says another. A more circumstantial account says, he took Arthur into a boat, stabbed him twice with his own hand, and threw the dead body into the river, about three miles from the castle. That he was murdered, and at the instigation of John, if not by his hand, there can be little doubt. There was nothing in the nature of the man to make him stop short of assassination.* Those who were taken prisoners at Mirabeau he treated with a cruelty which rarely disgraced the times of chivalry. He loaded them with irons, and kept them in dungeons of Normandy and England. We have distinct records of twenty-five of these prisoners being confined in Corfe Castle; and there, it is stated in the annals of the monks of Margan, twenty-two were starved to death. The Maid of Brittany, Arthur's eldest sister, wore out her life in confinement at Bristol. When, upon the death of his mother, in 1203, John granted a general pardon to "all prisoners, whatever the cause for which they may have been detained, whether for murder, felony, larceny, or breaking the forest laws," he specially excepted "the prisoners taken in our late war, those also whom we sent over from Normandy into England to be there kept and imprisoned." He could pardon the murderer, but not the soldier who followed the fortunes of his injured prince. John had his reward, in the gathering hatred of all mankind. In 1203, at a meeting of the estates of Brittany, at Vannes, it was resolved that a deputation should go before their "We There is a curious passage in a safe-conduct granted by John, and dated on the 24th of August, from Chinon, in which he says to Alan Fitz-Count and others who were desirous of seeing him, as he had been informed by "Furmie, servant of Arthur our nephew,' command you, however, that ye do nought whereby evil may befal our nephew Arthur." ("Patent Rolls," p. 36.) +Hardy, "Patent Rolls," p. 62. The feudal lord, king Philip, and demand justice. Upon this, John was summoned to appear, as a vassal of France, at the court of his peers. A safe conduct was demanded on the part of John. He shall come unmolested, said Philip to John's envoy, who put another question as to his safe return. king of France replied that he should return safe, if the judgment of his peers acquitted him. The bishop of Ely was the representative of John, and he alleged that the duke of Normandy could not come without the king of England, and that the barons of England would not permit their king to run the risk of death or imprisonment. The king of France contended that his rights as paramount lord over the duke of Normandy were not lost because William, who was the vassal of France, obtained England by force. John did not appear; and the court adjudged that "whereas, John, duke of Normandy, in violation of his oath to Philip, his lord, had murdered the son of his elder brother, a homager of the crown of France, and near kinsman to the king, and had perpetrated the crime within the signiory of France, he was found guilty of felony and treason, and was therefore adjudged to forfeit all the lands he held by homage." Publicists doubt the legality of the sentence. Of its moral justice there can be little doubt. It was no mere form of words when the fiefs of John were confiscated. Philip took, with scarcely an attempt at resistance, the strong places of Normandy. John's general, the earl of Pembroke, made a gallant attempt to relieve a besieged castle on the Seine. John himself lingered at Rouen, in a voluptuous indifference to disaster; fancying that he could easily recover the power that was melting away from him. At last a strong place in the neighbourhood of the great Norman city was taken, and he fled to England. The Normans, however unwilling to become a part of France, from which they had been so long disunited, were unable effectually to resist the power of Philip. John relied upon the aid of that England which he and his predecessor regarded chiefly as a land to be plundered; and England thought the time was come when her wealth should no longer be dissipated in Normandy, when her language should be spoken by those who ruled over her, when her laws should be administered by those who abided amongst her people, when her Church should be upheld by those who had no foreign bishoprics and abbeys. Rouen fell to the French besiegers. The duchy was won by France. The other provinces were all separated from the rule of the Plantagenets, with the exception of Aquitaine. In two years after, John made one more attempt to gain possession of his ancient fiefs; for the people were somewhat discontented at their fair provinces having lost their distinctive character of independent dominions. In 1206, John landed at Rochelle; took the castle of Montauban; burnt Angers; and left the usual traces of cruelty and devastation. He mingled the excitement of siege and battle with the more congenial excitement of gross licentiousness. His courage, like that of most profligates, was sudden and evanescent. On the eve of a battle he proposed a negotiation, and then stole off to England before a treaty was concluded. Through the legate of the pope an armistice was agreed upon. The contest was at an end. We have passed through the first act of the great historical drama which was presented during the eighteen years of the reign of John. England now stands alone. "This precious stone, set in the silver sea," has now to fight 1207.] QUARREL WITH POPE INNOCENT III. 337 her own battles, to assert her own rights, to gather her own harvests, without dependence upon foreign lords. England is a nation. The distinctions of Saxon and Norman are gone. The English people possess the island. But there is one authority, which, having established ecclesiastical supremacy, presumes to assert temporal dominion. The pope of this period, Innocent III., was one of the most resolved and ambitious men that ever filled the papal throne. With spiritual power he was unsatisfied, unless he could render that power an instrument for the subjugation of every European state to a humiliating subserviency. This principle, as expressed by himself in a memorable letter, was that "as God created two luminaries, one superior for the day, and the other inferior for the night, which last owes its splendour entirely to the first, so he has disposed that the regal dignity should be but a reflection of the papal authority, and entirely subordinate to it." He assumed the regency of Sicily during a minority. He decided between rival claimants to the imperial crown of Germany, first setting up one prince and then deposing him. He excommunicated Philip of France for an unlawful marriage, and compelled him to take back his repudiated wife. John of England, always a slave to his violent impulses, when he had lost France, and was unpopular in England, embarked in a quarrel with this dangerous pontiff. In 1207, the see of Canterbury was vacant. The monks of St. Augustine's abbey had always contended, though in vain, for the right to elect the archbishop. The prelates had as constantly resisted this pretension, and had generally agreed to the recommendation of the king in their election of a fit person for this important office. Dr. Lingard justly says, that men such as monks, utterly secluded from the world, were the least calculated to appreciate the merits of the candidates for ecclesiastical dignities. On the vacancy of 1207 the monks of Canterbury clandestinely assembled, and elected their sub-prior to be the head of the Church in England. They dreaded the opposition of the king and the prelates, but they had hope in the character of the pope, and sent their sub-prior to Rome. He divulged the secret; and, upon leaving the kingdom, avowed himself archbishop elect. The monks were alarmed when their proceedings became known, and immediately yielded to the nomination by the king of John de Gray, bishop of Norwich. A deputation of their body was sent to Rome, and they made oath to John that they would support the bishop of Norwich if a fresh election were required. The pope, having decided that the choice was in the monks, in preference to the suffragan bishops, absolved the deputation from their oaths, and set aside the sub-prior and John de Gray. The monks, under the papal direction, chose Stephen Langton, an Englishman of great learning and ability, then a cardinal at Rome. The choice was, eventually, a fortunate one for England; and it might have been wise for the king to have acquiesced. He took the usual course of his wilful and revengeful nature. He seized upon the monastery of Canterbury, banished the monks who remained, and appropriated its revenues. Innocent, it is stated, wrote him conciliatory letters, which John met with angry defiance. In another year the whole kingdom was placed by the pope under an interdict. We have described the effects of an interdict upon a province.* When * Page 267. 338 IRELAND. WALES. [1210-1211. the bishops of London, Worcester, and Ely, by command of Innocent, pronounced the sentence against all the king's dominions, in Passion Week of 1208, they fled the country. Other bishops quitted their pastoral charge, one only being left in England. The monks and nuns had their religious offices within their own walls, but all the churches were closed to the people. Sermons, indeed, were preached in the churchyards on Sundays; and marriages, during the continuance of this universal interdict, were performed at the church-door, as one chronicler states. This anomalous condition of society lasted more than six years. During this period John appears to have conducted himself with more vigour and decision than at any other part of his reign. He compromised a difference with the king of Scotland, without any actual warfare. He led a great army into Ireland, which had been distracted by the rivalries and oppressions of the proud barons who had been deputed to its administration since the time of Henry II. The presence of the English king, with a powerful force, was held as a blessing by the native chiefs and the body of the people. William de Braiose, who had received extensive grants of land at the beginning of John's reign, conscious of his crimes, hurried to France, leaving his wife and son in the hands of John. A brief entry in the chronicle of Florence of Worcester tells their fate: " Matilda de Braiose and William her son were starved to death at Windsor." The two De Lacys, amongst the most oppressive of the Norman aristocracy in Ireland, also fled to France, and subsisted as labourers in the garden of an abbey. After two or three years, their rank was discovered by the abbot, and through his intercession they were restored to the king's favour. Ireland was, before the visit of John, a prey to those lawless outrages which are invariably the result of tyrannous government. Dublin was peopled, in a great degree by colonists from Bristol, under a grant from Henry II. On some occasion of country festivity at a place called the Wood of Cullen, when many of these citizens were present, a great body of lawless people came down from the Wicklow mountains, and massacred three hundred men, women, and children. Some of the English laws had been introduced by Henry II., and his grants of land were according to the feudal tenures. John originated some useful reforms. He divided the portions of the kingdom in his possession into shires, each with its sheriff and other officers, and he coined the first sterling money circulated in Ireland. A record of the reign of Henry III. says, that king John "brought with him into Ireland discreet men, skilled in the laws, by whose advice he commanded the laws of England to be observed in Ireland." He left John de Gray, bishop of Norwich, as his chief justiciary, a man of talent and discretion. During the troublous future of England in this reign the sister island was tranquil and prosperous. SENN From a Irish Silver Penny of John. specimen in the Brit. Museum. The expedition to Ireland was followed next year, 1211, by an attempt to repress the incursions of the Welsh. John advanced to the foot of Snowdon, and there received twenty-eight young men, as hostages, from Llewellyn. During these warlike operations in Ireland and Wales, the interdict had been followed by a sentence of excommunication against John personally. By the 1211.J INDUSTRY AND COMMUNICATION. 339 most rigorous watchfulness of the ports its publication was prevented. We have no means of judging of the general social condition of the kingdom during the period when the usual course of its ecclesiastical life was suspended. The marches of the king to Scotland and Ireland and Wales were, doubtless, intended to give occupation to discontented nobles and dangerous men-atarms. But they were costly. The Jews were, as usual, plundered without scruple; and the memorable expedient of drawing a tooth daily from a Jew at Bristol, until he paid down ten thousand marks, is recorded in connection with the Irish expedition. There is an instrument of John, addressed to the mayor and barons of London, in which he marvels that the Jews have been molested in their city, and says, "You know that the Jews are under our special protection if we had granted our protection to a dog it ought to be inviolably observed." The protection of John was like that which was given to Sindbad and his companions by the Magian people, who fed their victims till they became fat and stout, and then served them as meat to their king. What the Jews could not supply was taken from the churches. The industry of the people was little affected by the suspension of religious offices. London bridge-the identical bridge over which thousands now * living have passed-the bridge which stood boldly up against flood and frost for more than six centuries-was finished in 1209, having been thirty-three years in course of erection. John took an interest in the completion of this important work, for in April, 1202, he recommends-in a letter to the mayor and citizens of London, dated from Molineux,-"the renowned Isenbert," by whose diligence the bridges of Saintes and Rochelle were constructed in a *Hardy, "Patent Rolls," p. 61. |