3.What kind of man was Richard I?
4.Describe the siege of Acre and the truce with Saladin.
5.How did Richard get imprisoned?
6.What unpleasantries awaited him in England?
7.How did Richard’s life finish?
29. KING JOHN, CALLED LACKLAND
There is an old English popular ballad everybody knows not only in England, but also in Russia, because the great poet-translator S. Marshak translated it into Russian with true skill. It begins with the following lines:
"I'll tell you a story, a story anon,
Of a noble Prince, and his name was King John, For he was a prince, and a prince of great might, He held up great wrongs, he put down great right".3
Yes, the hero of this ballad is the very Prince John (1167-1216), Henry II and Queen Eleanor's youngest son, King Richard Lionheart's brother, who brought such a bitter distress to his father at the deathbed of Henry II, when the King knew that the favourite son was the first in the list of those who fought against him. The very Prince John who deceived the whole English people and his brother Richard, when the latter was absent from the country.
In his early age John was given the nickname of Lackland, because, being the youngest in the family, he indeed had no lands of his own, unlike his elder brothers. But Henry II was very anxious about John's future, and John was endowed with castles and lands on both sides of the Channel, the vacant earldom of Cornwall was reserved for him (1175); and he got the lordship of Ireland (1176). In 1185 John was sent to govern Ireland, but in a few months he returned, covered with disgrace, because he offended the loyal chiefs by his childish insolence, and entirely failed to defend the people from the hostile Irish.
We have already told about his next deeds from the story of Richard, let us not repeat it. John became the English King in 1199, at the age of thirty-three years. His little nephew
Arthur also had the claim to the throne; but John made fine promises to the nobility, and got himself crowned at Westminster within a few weeks after his brother Richard's death. Charles Dickens writes: "I doubt whether the crown could possibly have been put upon a meaner coward, or a more detestable villain, if England have been searched from end to end to find him out".
Indeed, it is difficult to say anything good of him. He seems to have been cruel to everybody, and to have had no friends. When the barons would no longer serve him, John wrung money out of his subjects, and hired foreign soldiers to fight for him in Scotland, Wales and Ireland. He had not been king for a very long time, when he lost not only Normandy, so that the English kings were no longer Dukes of Normandy, but the other parts of France that had belonged to his mother Eleanor.
As to the boy Arthur, his sister's son, claiming for the English throne, John with the help of his men seized him in his bed and sent to the castle of Falaise in Normandy. Then the King
3 Послушайте повесть Минувших времен О доблестном принце По имени Джон.
Судил он и правил С дубового трона, Не ведая правил, Не зная закона.
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took secret counsel with the worst of his nobles how to get rid of Prince Arthur. Some said: "Put out his eyes and keep him in prison". Others said: "Have him stabbed". Others: "Have him hanged". Others: "Have him poisoned".
King John sent certain ruffians to Falaise to blind the boy with red-hot irons. But Arthur shed such piteous tears that the warden of the castle could not bear it and, at his own risk, he sent the savages away.
But one dark night, when Arthur lay sleeping, his jailer aroused him and told him to come down the staircase to the foot of the tower. The boy hurriedly dressed himself and obeyed. When they came to the bottom of the winding stairs, and the night air from the river blew upon their faces, the jailer trod upon his torch and put it out. In the darkness Arthur was hurriedly brought down into a boat, where he found his uncle and one other man.
The boy knelt to them, and prayed them not to kill him. But they stabbed him and sunk his body in the river with heavy stones. When the spring morning broke, the tower door was closed, the boat was gone, the river sparkled on its way, and never more was any trace of the poor boy seen by mortal's eyes.
The news of this atrocious murder spread throughout England and awakened the real hatred for the King.
The French King Philip ordered John (as the holder of the territory in France John was Philip's vassal) to come before him and defend. King John refused; King Philip declared him false, perjured and guilty, and made war. Very soon King Philip deprived him of one-third of his dominions. And, when the fighting took place, King John was always found either to be eating and drinking or to be running away.
In 1205 Archbishop of Canterbury Hubert died. The Pope claimed, as Popes did then, to have the right of ruling the churches of all the Christian countries, and he chose the next Archbishop of Canterbury, but John refused to accept his choice. So the Pope sent an order that, till the king gave way, all churches in England were to be closed; no bells were to be rung, calling the people to service; no one was to be baptized, married and even buried by the clergy. This made everyone suffer, especially the poor, for they were used to getting help from the monasteries and clergy. This order from the Pope was called an interdict, or forbidding. But John only got more and more angry and violent.
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At last, weary of negotiation with the obstinate King, Pope Innocent, himself really the most powerful Prince in Europe, declared John imposed, and ordered the King of France to invade England. Then John hastened to submit to the Pope (1213). As a result, England itself was surrendered to Innocent.
During John's reign the nobles had to |
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suffer from all kinds of feudal laws. At last, |
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they |
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demanded |
Magna Carta is an English charter, originally issued in |
athe year 1215 and reissued later in the 13th century in modified versions. The later versions excluded the most direct challenges to the monarch's authority that had been present in the 1215 charter. The Great Charter of the Liberties of England, and of the Liberties of the Forest, still remains on the statute books of England and Wales.
confirmation of the charter of Henry I. In the British Museum hangs a copy of the Great Charter, often called by its Latin name, Magna Carta. It was forced from John, with great courage and difficulty, by the barons. In it he had promised certain rights to the people, so that they might live in safety under good government. This Great Charter was drawn out from the Charter, which Henry II gave to the people, when he became king, which, again, was established upon the laws of Edward the Confessor and Alfred.
Among the laws were these:
1. The King was not to make the people pay taxes without the consent of the Great Council.
2. No one was to be punished for any wrong-doing without a proper trial according to the law of the land.
The charter went beyond simply addressing specific baronial complaints, and formed a wider proposal for political reform, albeit one focusing on the rights of free men, not serfs and unfree labour. It promised the protection of church rights, protection from illegal imprisonment,
access to swift justice, new taxation only with baronial consent and limitations on scutage and other feudal payments. A council of twenty-five neutral barons would be created to monitor and ensure John's future adherence to the charter, whilst the rebel army would stand down and London would be surrendered to the king.
There is a little island on the Thames, near Windsor, called Magna Carta Island, and on it John met the barons to put the seal on a lump of wax to show that he signed and consented to keep the promises set out in the Charter.
He was in a furious state of anger all the time. It is said that as soon as the deed was done "he threw himself on the ground, gnashing his teeth and gnawing sticks and straws in his rage".
The Pope soothed him and said he need not keep his word, and crowds of foreign soldiers came to help John to burn and rob and kill all over the country. It was a troublesome time.
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As it was now impossible to bear with the country like a wilderness of cruelty, or to hold any terms with such an outlaw of a King any longer, the barons sent to Louis, son of the French monarch, to offer him the English crown. Louis immediately landed at Sandwich and went on to London — King John hastily ran away from Dover, where he happened to be.
In his savage and murderous course, John had now taken some towns and met with some successes. But, "happily for England and humanity, his death was near", as Ch. Dickens says.
John had to cross the Wash, the broad inlet between Lincolnshire and Norfolk. When the tide is out, there are miles of sands, and the long train of carts and wagons, which were carrying the king's treasures, were lost in soft quicksands as the tide came flowing in. Quite lately a handsome cup was washed up near the shore of the Wash, and it is believed to be part of this lost treasure of King John.
Cursing and swearing, John went on to the Swinestead Abbey, when the monks set before him a great deal of pears, and peaches, and new cider — some say poison, too, but there is very little reason to suppose so. All night John lay ill with a burning fever, haunted with horrible fears. Then they carried him to the castle of Newark upon Trent; and there, on the 18th of October, he died at the age of forty-nine, the seventeenth year of his vile reign.
Comprehension questions
1.Why was John called ‘lackland’?
2.What events surrounded the killing of Arthur, John’s nephew?
3.What did Phillip of France do following the killing?
4.Why did ‘England itself surrender to Pope Innocent’?
5.Describe how Magna Carter came into being and what it said.
6.What was the dismal end of King John?
30. HENRY III
At the time of his father's death his eldest son Henry (1207-1272) was but nine years old. The boy was taken by the earl of Pembroke, the Marshal of England, to the city of Gloucester, and then crowned in great haste, when he was ten years old. All that was done, because the Barons remembered the murdered Arthur's sister Eleanor, shut up in her convent in Bristol, and the Barons did not want to maintain her right to the crown. As the Crown itself had been lost with the King's treasure in the raging water, and, as there was no time to make another, they put a circle of plain gold upon the boy's head instead.
A great council met at Bristol, revised Magna Carta, and made Lord Pembroke Regent or Protector of England, as the King was too young.
Lord Pembroke afterwards applied himself to governing the country justly and to healing the quarrels and disturbances that had arisen among men in the days of King John. He improved Magna Carta, and he changed the Forest Laws, so that a peasant was no longer put to death for killing a deer in a Royal Forest, but was only imprisoned.
The King, as he grew up, showed a strong resemblance to his father, in feebleness, inconsistency, and irresolution. The best in him was that he was not cruel.
But Lord Pembroke died in three years of his protectorship, and others replaced him, and this period is known in the English history as the time of great disorder. Henry III was for a long time only a puppet in somebody’s hands.
But the English people in those years became more reasonable and strong. When Henry III wanted money for his wars, his buildings (he especially liked to build and rebuild churches and Abbeys), or for his foreign favourites, the people refused to give it to him, unless he promised to keep to the Great Charter and rule by the law of the land. In the great fight
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between Henry III and the people about this the name of a great patriot stands out — Simon de Montfort.
"I fear thunder and lightning not a little, Sir Simon", said Henry to him one day, when they were caught in a bad storm, "but I fear you more than all the thunder and lightning in the world".
Henry often made promises over and over again, only to break them. One day, for instance, a great procession of bishops and clergy, with splendid silk robes, carrying lighted candles in their hands, arrived at the Great Hall at Westminster, where Henry awaited them. Then, standing round the King, they spoke strong and terrible words as to what would happen to the king who took away any of the freedom of the land. As their voices died away — and you easily can almost feel the hush after the loud, passionate talking — they flung down the lighted candles, saying:
"May all those who take away our rights perish, as these lights perish!"
The king made solemn promises as the candles were relit, and the bells rang out joyfully to tell the news to the people outside.
But the promises were broken, as usual, and the country had to fight again, and Henry was forced to draw up new laws. The new laws were written in English for the first time since the Norman Conquest. The famous Proclamation of Henry III to his people, written in Middle English on October 18th, 1258, was an important step forward towards English autonomy from France. However, the king broke his word again, and more fighting went on, till at last Simon succeeded in forming a "talking place", called a Parliament, after the French word "parler", meaning to talk.
Actually, England has long had a tradition of a body of men who would assist and advise the King on important matters. Under the Anglo-Saxon Kings, there was an advisory council, the Witenagemot ("meeting of wise men"). As part of the Norman Conquest of England, William I, did away with the Witenagemot, replacing it with a Curia Regis ("King's Council"). Membership of the Curia was largely restricted to the tenants in chief, the few nobles who "rented" great estates directly from the King, along with certain senior ecclesiastics. So Simon may be said to restore the old tradition. But most historians date the emergence of a parliament with some degree of power to which the throne had to defer no later than the rule of Edward I.
The Parliament was a more democratic institution than the old Assembly of the Wisemen had been, though it was, and largely still is in today’s England, a body acting in counsel with what is called today Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, or simply the Privy Council for short, a committee of the monarch's closest advisors to give confidential advice on affairs of state. This feudal hangover, as well as many other anachronisms, is still preserved in Britain.
In Parliament not only barons and bishops could discuss what was best for the country, but knights from every shire had the right to come and talk; also burgess from the towns had a voice to say what their part of the country wanted done, and how they wished the money to be spent, which they paid in taxes (1254).
Unfortunately Simon's Parliament had little time to show its merits, for almost immediately the barons began to quarrel between themselves; especially the proud Earl of Gloucester with the Earl of Leicester, who went abroad in disgust. Then the people began to be dissatisfied with the barons, because they did not do enough for them. The eldest king's son Prince Edward joined Gloucester against Sir Simon Leicester. At the battle of Evesham Simon was defeated and killed, though he fought bravely. His body was brutalized, cut up and different parts sent to the Lords who had accomplished the most. But the people kept him in their memory. Many years afterwards, they loved him more than ever, and regarded him as a saint, and always spoke of him as "Sir Simon the Righteous".
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