1217.] BATTLE OF LINCOLN. 357 English bishops stood around, with a few nobles. On the 11th of November, at a great council held at Bristol, Pembroke was chosen regent-" Rector regis et regni." Some of the adherents of John had considered that the Great Charter had swept away too many of the ancient rights of the crown, and some of the clauses so objected to were reserved for future consideration. But in its essential spirit it remained unaltered. Those who had called in a foreign prince to maintain that Charter which John would have annulled, were thus conciliated. The supporters of Louis gradually fell off. The principle of nationality was successfully appealed to; for the name of Englishman was one of which the high-born were now proud-that name which a century earlier was spoken by the Norman with scorn and derision. Gualo, the legate, brought his spiritual weapons to the support of the new government, by excommunicating Louis himself, and all who adhered to him. Hostilities between the armies went on till Christmas was at hand, when a truce till Easter was agreed to. Louis hurried to France, and came back with reinforcements; but he found that a spirit of dislike to his pretensions had grown up in the nation. The regent had been active in winning over the most formidable barons, and there was a general confidence in his honour and sagacity. The foreign army came to be regarded, not as the deliverers of the English from a native tyranny, but as plunderers whose excesses could not be endured by a free people. The Londoners, however, continued to adhere to the prince who had come to their succour; although the endurance of their fidelity was constantly threatened by agitation and conspiracy. At last a decisive battle was fought at Lincoln. At the end of April in 1217, the Count of Perche, with six hundred knights and twenty thousand men― "wicked French freebooters," as a chronicler calls them,-marched from London to besiege the castle of Lincoln, which was held by the king's party. Pembroke called out the tenants of the crown, and he marched from Newark with a resolute band, who had been invested with a sacred character by the legate. Having been promised the privileges of crusaders they advanced. with white crosses sewed on their breasts. The French army was within the walled town; but the castle held out, being bravely defended by Nichola de Camville, the widow of its hereditary governor. Had the Count of Perche taken the open field against Pembroke's small army, the superiority of the French cavalry might have prevailed over the English bowmen. But Pembroke boldly entered the town whilst a sortie was made from the castle; and in the narrow streets, where the horse could not act with advantage, a merciless slaughter ensued, and the French army surrendered to the inferior numbers. The Count of Perche had fallen, refusing to accept of quarter. This victory, which from its easy accomplishment was called "The Fair of Lincoln," was grossly abused by the royalists. The city, which had resolutely adhered to the cause of the barons, was given up to pillage; and many of the wretched inhabitants perished in their flight over the Witham. This victory of the 20th of May might not have decided the contest, had it not, within three months, been followed up by a great naval success. Under the command of a famous pirate, Eustace the Monk, an armament of eighty large vessels put to sea from Calais, on the 24th of August, for the purpose of effecting a landing on the Thames, to aid Prince Louis. Hubert de Burgh, the justiciary, a resolute and able man, collected forty vessels in 358 DEATH OF THE REGENT, PEMBROKE. [1219. the Cinque Ports, and boldly set sail from Dover to meet the invaders. The contest was a singular one, if we may credit the statement that De Burgh caused powdered quick-lime to be scattered in the air, which the wind carried into the faces of his enemies. The boarding-axes of the English were, as we may well believe, much more formidable than the quick-lime. The victory was complete. From that day the cause of Louis was hopeless. The regent was too high-minded to exact severe terms from his opponent. On the 11th of September a treaty was signed, on an islet of the Thames, near Kingston. An amnesty, with a participation in all privileges, was granted to the English adherents of Louis; he and his followers were absolved from all spiritual censures; and he was conducted to the coast by the earl of Pembroke. Roger of Wendover says that Louis received five thousand pounds to meet his necessities. Others record that the citizens of London lent him the money. Henry's government appears to have held out promises of large sums to insure his quiet departure.* But some months elapsed before the kingdom settled into peace. Whilst Pembroke strictly observed the conditions of the treaty, the pope's legate pursued the clergy who had favoured the French, with a most vindictive spirit; and the banishment of these excommunicated clerks was insisted upon in the following spring. Some of the castles that had been taken by leaders of the royalists were forcibly retained by them; and the accustomed pillage of the people by the armed bands that always harassed the country in troublesome times, went forward, till the laws again maintained their supremacy. Unfortunately for the country, the regent Pembroke died in 1219. But by his moderation and love of justice the Charter of John was now perfected by a Charter of the Forests, in which the terrible penalties for destroying the king's deer were abolished, and the Pembroke. milder punishments of fine or imprisonment were substituted. Pembroke left a noble example to English statesmen of the principle upon which the blessing of just laws could alone be made permanent a constant reparation, instead of a sweeping change. The Charter and its subsequent improvements were essentially practical reforms; and thus they resisted every attempt to overturn them, during a coming century of struggle, and stood boldly up, equally strong against a weak Henry or a powerful Edward. Pembroke bestowed the Charter upon Ireland; and provided that it should live in the popular mind of England, by being read periodically in the county courts.t Upon the death of Pembroke, Hubert de Burgh succeeded to the regency. His nature, unlike that of Pembroke, did not rise above the tyranny and cruelty of his times. He repressed disorders with unrelenting severity; and Close Rolls, Feb. 12, 1218. The monument of Pembroke is still to be seen in the Temple Church of London. 1225.] CONFIRMATIONS OF THE CHARTER. 359 he obtained, in 1223, a bull from the pope, declaring Henry competent to do all royal acts; which bull was followed by a disposition to encourage a neglect of the charters in the king's officers. But a remedy was arising out of the condition of the people. The clause of Magna Charta which said, "No scutage or aid shall be imposed in our kingdom, unless by the common council of our kingdom," raised the power of the purse above the power of the sword; for although this clause was omitted in the Charters of Henry III., neither aid nor escuage were "exacted at discretion, throughout his reign." * The nation, generally, appears to have possessed some acknowledged restraining power over the royal lavishers of earlier times, and when it was asked by the king to give “aid," it took care to demand some right in return. For half a century of the days of Henry III., our history is one continuous record of money obtained by redress of grievance. But it is also a record of many arbitrary tallages upon the industrious classes, especially of London, which the king made in the absence of any right of general taxation. Yet, at every new extortion, there was a correspondent weakening of the power to extort. Hume says, of the reign of Henry III., "What mortal could have the patience to write or read a long detail of such frivolous events as those with which it is filled, or attend to a tedious narrative which would follow, through a series of fifty-six years, the caprices and weaknesses of so mean a prince as Henry?" But if those caprices and weaknesses, those frivolous events, be a mirror of the state of society, they cease to be tedious, and may be as instructive in the prolix annals of Matthew Paris, as the glorious victories of a later period in the fervid strains of Sir John Froissart. It is in the pages of the monk of St. Albans that we may trace the growing influence of a national opinion. Pass," says Mr. Hallam, "but from the history of Roger de Hoveden to that of Matthew Paris, from the second Henry to the third, and judge whether the victorious struggle had not excited an energy of public spirit to which the nation was before a stranger. The strong man, in the sublime language of Milton, was aroused from sleep, and shook his invincible locks." In 1225, when the king was nineteen years of age, a common council was summoned to deliberate upon the urgent necessities of the crown for supplies. Hubert de Burgh, the justiciary, set forth the wrongs which had been done in the seizure of domains in France that belonged to the English crown, and asked an aid of a fifteenth upon all personal estates. The aid was granted, under very strict limitations as to the mode in which it was to be used; but it was also required that the Charter should be confirmed for a third time. In the form in which it was passed in that year, it still holds a place as the first statute of the English statute law. The collection of the subsidy was immediately enforced; but no foreign successes were the result. In 1227, the king declared himself of age, and set up his prerogative above the Charters in these words: "Whensoever, and wheresoever, and as often as it may be our pleasure, we may declare, interpret, enlarge, or diminish, the aforesaid statutes, and their several parts, by our own free will, and as to us shall seem expedient for the security of us and our land." Had there been a man of deeds, and not of words, upon the throne, this declaration might have put * Hallam, Middle Ages, vol. ii. p. 331. 360 THE KING'S ASSERTION OF PREROGATIVE. [1227. England, even at this hour, into the same condition as that of less fortunate countries, whose kings may interpret, enlarge, or diminish laws by their own free will. But, amongst the great nations of Europe, England stands almost solitary in the assertion which a judge of the time of Henry III. proclaimed "The king must not be subject to any man, but to God and the law, for the law makes him king. Let the king, therefore, give to the law what the law gives to him, dominion and power; for there is no king where will, and not law, bears rule." * Let no Englishman, who lives under the rule of law, and not of will, forget that this privilege has been derived from a long line of forefathers; and that, although the eternal principles of justice depend not upon the precedents of ages, but may be asserted some day by any community with whom a continued despotism has made them "native, and to the manner born," we have the security that the old tree of liberty stands in the old earth, and that a short-lived trunk has not been thrust into a new soil, to bear a green leaf or two, and then to die. When this resolved young king, whose "free will " * Bracton, quoted in Hallam, vol. ii. p. 334. was henceforth to be |