of his as Archbishop of Canterbury. But Pope InnoJohn and cent III. thought John's friend unworthy the Pope. and chose Stephen Langton. John flew into a furious rage and swore he would never receive Langton. Innocent, however, would not give way either, and first he excommunicated John, and then put the realm under an interdict: that is to say, he forbade all services; the churches were closed; even the dead could not be buried in consecrated ground. Then, as John was still obstinate, the pope invited the King of France to send over an army to put him off the throne. At last John gave way. In sign that he submitted he even gave up his crown to Pandulf, the pope's legate, and received it back from him as a gift from the pope. Every Englishman was ashamed of a king who could demean himself in this way.

John continued to govern so badly that something had to be done. Accordingly Stephen Langton and the barons held a great meeting, to which they invited representatives from every shire to come and declare their grievances against the king, and consider what should be done to restrain him. John tried to collect forces, but he could do nothing. He had not to resist the barons alone; he had to meet the clergy, the knights, and the citizens of the towns as well. Magna Carta, Indeed, everyone was united against him, and he had to give way. He met the barons at Runnimede, and there he signed Magna Carta, the greatest charter of English liberties.

1215.

We must notice particularly two things to which the king bound himself.

(1) He was to take no tax except by common consent of the realm; and this consent was to be given in the Great Council, to which not only the greater

barons and churchmen were to be summoned, but all those who held land from the king.

(2) No one was to be imprisoned or punished except after trial by his equals; and the charter adds, "to none will we sell, to none will we deny right or justice".

These safeguard two most important British rights: first, that the king may not take money, unless Parliament grants it to him; and secondly, that no man is to be punished without a trial, and that trial must be before a jury.

The Struggle over the

Charter.

John signed the charter and promised to obey it; he gave his promise because at the time there was nothing else for him to do; and he gave it willingly, because from the first he had not the slightest intention of keeping it. He got the pope to say that he was not bound by his oath, one of those pieces of papal interference that made Englishmen dislike the pope. In less than a year he and the barons were again at war. The barons even invited the French king's son into England to fight against John, and they offered him the crown, but the struggle was stopped for the time by John's sudden death.

In

The new king, Henry III., was a boy of nine years old, so until he grew up the barons in the Great Council were able to govern as they Henry III., wished. But when Henry became a man, 1216-1272. he took the reins of power into his own hands. many ways he was very different from John. Instead of being clever and cunning and treacherous, he was weak and foolish. But he was like him in ruling badly. He trusted much to foreign favourites, and he spent a great deal of money in giving large sums to the pope for things that could do no possible good

to England. So by degrees men began to think that he too must be forced to govern better.

The leader of the party who wanted reform was Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, who had Simon de married the king's sister. Henry at first Montfort. liked him. He had sent him to govern Guienne, the one province of France that still belonged to England. Simon was a good soldier and he had ruled it well, but Henry grew tired of him, and very meanly left Simon to pay from his own pocket the money which he had spent in the king's service.

Thus Earl Simon came home in disgust, and put himself at the head of the barons. They assembled in a Great Council, or, as we may now call it, a Parliament, for the word is first used in Henry III.'s reign, and arranged that all that the king did was to be overlooked by a committee of barons. The king promised to keep these "Provisions of Oxford" as they were called, but he was as false as John. He too got the pope to declare him quit of his oath, and so nothing was left for Simon and his party but to go to war. Each side gathered forces, and they met at Lewes. Battle of The king's army was bigger, but he lost the Lewes. day because his son Edward pursued after some fugitives too far. When he returned Simon had won the battle. Both Henry and Edward were made captive.

Simon had no wish to seize the throne for himself; Simon's he only wanted to have the kingdom well Parliament, governed, so he called a Parliament. It 1265. is this Parliament which gives Simon a title to be remembered for ever as one of the makers of the British constitution.

Hitherto the assembly which had helped the king

to govern England had consisted of barons and churchmen. But Simon was not content with this; he summoned as well two knights from each shire, and two citizens from each city. Here for the first time we have the appearance in Parliament of the men who now compose the House of Commons. Simon may be called the founder of this House.

Simon governed well, but he could not prevent the barons who should have supported him from growing jealous of his power. So after two years Battle of the king's party raised a fresh army led by Evesham; Prince Edward. Simon was surrounded at Death of Evesham and killed, fighting bravely in the midst of his followers.

Simon.

He had set a good example. He had summoned the first Parliament, which contained, as our parliaments do to-day, lords, county members, and borough members. But Simon was in a sense a rebel. It might be that no king would care to imitate what he had done; in this case nothing might have come of his experiment.

Curiously enough the man who followed Simon's example, and made his new scheme the regular rule for governing England, was the very one Edward I., whom Simon regarded as his most bitter 1272-1307. foe. The same Prince Edward, who had overthrown Simon at Evesham, adopted his measure when he became King Edward I. In 1295 he caused to be summoned a Parliament like Simon's Parliament, including knights of the shire and citizens from the towns; and by doing so he settled for ever Model the question of who should sit in Parlia- Parliament. ment. From this time onward no one would think that a Parliament was properly formed unless it included these representatives of the people. Thus

(M 595)

D

Edward's Parliament of 1295 is always called the "Model Parliament", as it gave an example to all others to copy.

Powers of Par

Of course Parliament of those days differed much from the Parliaments we know. It was one house, not two, for until Edward III.'s reign both lords and commons sat together. Now the commons are much the more powerful, but then the lords held the chief power. Now the monarch follows the wishes of Parliament in the choice of his ministers, then he did not consult its wishes. Now Parliament meets every year, then it met less often. -But these are small differences. In nature Parliament of to-day is as it was then; it refuses to allow the king to take taxes, or to make laws without its consent; and on occasions we may find it putting out very great It could dethrone kings who governed badly. For instance, it assisted to depose Edward I.'s own son, Edward II.; and, eighty years later, it put Richard II. off the throne, and made Henry IV. of Lancaster king in his place. We cannot, indeed, say that it ruled England all the time, or that it undertook all branches of government as it does now; but whenever there was need to control a king, or to get rid of him, men looked to Parliament to perform the duty.

liament in the Fourteenth Century.

power.

IX. THE BEGINNINGS OF SCOTLAND.

Since it is during the reign of Edward I. that the affairs of England and Scotland become seriously entangled, it is convenient at this point to turn back and see what the kingdom of Scotland was, and how