STEPHEN LANGTON AND HIS TIMES.*

TIHLOSOPHERS and historians are agreed that the rise and fall of -nations are in the main subject to laws as real, though not so certainly determined—perhaps in their very nature not so uncon- ditional and inflexible —as those of astronomy. There are large -regions of history in which the cosmic order of events, and the purpose which runs through them, have been ascertained with the general and settled consent of all men ; but there are apparently great chaotic blanks in the same history of which the wit of man 'has not yet discovered the meaning ; and not only so, but there is still much in every history as to which even learned and thought- ful men are not agree as to what is chaos and what is cosmos, --whether light and goodness have triumphed, or ignorance and evil have still held their ground. Nor are these irrecon- cilable differences of opinion confined to the study of modern `history: they say that in three hundred years the once burning lava of Vesuvius becomes the most fertile of soils for the olive and the vine; but there is hardly a nation so ancient that he who -reads its history may not feel the still smouldering fire of human paeaion glowing under its records. The facts of Greek and Roman history are finally ascertained and known as far as they ever can be, yet they tell one tale to the modern Conservative and another to the Liberal ; Mr. Grote will not be always followed through his history of Greece by those who would not have followed him in the House of Commons ; and the Pompey and Caesar of -Dr. Arnold, and the institutions which the one defended and the other overthrew, seem almost irreconcilably different from those of Mr. Merivale, though all the facts were equally present to each of these learned and thoughtful historians.

And if there are such great practical difficulties in rightly ,estimating the development and progress of nations of which the history is complete and closed, and in ascertaining the laws of that 'development and progress, much more must this be so with our own English history, with its old vital forces still vigor-

ous and active in our daily politics. If we endeavour to investigate the laws which have determined the 'growth of the English Constitution we are met by the difficulty that our crucial experiments are not yet completed, nor -consequently the inferences to be derived from them settled in all -cases beyond question. The volume before us recognises the -difficulty, and offers the reader a contribution towards its solution. It is the first of a series of " Lives of some English Popular 'Leaders in the Middle Ages,"—namely, Stephen Langton, Wat 'Tyler, Sir John Oldcaetle, and Jack Cade. As regards Stephen Langton, whose life is contained gin the present -volume, we are not disposed altogether to agree with Mr. C. E. Maurice that the important part he took in the great .struggle for constitutional liberty in King John's time has sot hitherto been duly recognised, for we should rather say that the true character and worth of his work are among the settled points of our history : but certainly this is not the case as to the -other "popular leaders" whose lives be promises us ; and when 'be has shown us how " such men as Wat Tyler, and Sir John Old- -castle, and such work as theirs were needed in England to com- plete the labours of Langton and De Montfort," we shall have to -thank him for a new and valuable light upon a really obscure -part of our history. The popular notion of Jack Cade is derived from Shakespeare, and Wat Tyler is commonly supposed to have bean a kindred spirit ; while few have -probably even so distinct, however unreal, an image of the Lollard Lord Cobham. And if Mr. Maurice can " rehabili- tate" Wat Tyler and Jack Cade, and show that to them, too, we owe some real share of our Constitution and its liberties, in the forms they are now actually assuming, we may not only be grate- ful for the new light, but also' hope that it may throw some rays

Lisa of Boglish Popular Leaders. l.—Stephen Langton. By 0. Edmund Maurice. London: Henry S. King and Co. 1572.

upon various unsolved social and political problems of our own day, and the efforts of some of our own " popular leaders."

Under the heading of " England's Preparation for Langton's Work," Mr. Maurice begins his volume with a sketch of the events between the Norman Conquest and the early years of the reign of King John. That Conquest had finally eliminated and swept away many things which had once a mean- ing and a use in English institutions, but which had now died out; and it had also compressed,—and for the time seemed to have not only compressed, but utterly crushed—other still living elements of the national life, which had hitherto tended to dis- organisation for want of such a strong control, but which since that day have, on the one hand, never again permanently broken looseto the destruction of that national unity which is essential to national existence ; while they have, on the other hand, grown and expanded with a vigour which has not been restricted, but encouraged to the utmost by this limitation by a central unity. The King, the Church, the Barons, the Towns, the Com- mons, the as yet unorganised People, all might struggle to the utmost for their several rights, for their several places in the Com- monwealth, with all the more completeness and energy, because a higher power than any one of them—the unity of the nation—was present to prevent any one from being destroyed by the others. From the moment that the Conquest was effected the life of the nation began to re-assert itself by a ceaseless conflict, and growth through conflict, of all the elements of the Constitution. So that when John, the most vicious and worthless of English Kings, ascended the throne, in a generation which might seem as utterly demoralised as himself, there was yet a real foundation of con- stitutional law and liberty laid, ready for the superstructure which Langton was soon to begin to raise upon it. The charters and laws and courts of justice of John's predecessors had established precedents to which, instead of to mere force of arms, appeal could be made ; while the traditions maintained and handed down by Laufranc, Auselm, and Becket recognised the claim of the Eng- lish people to have their cause upheld by the English Church against Pope as well as King. The lives and doings of the great Archbishops are more or less familiar to most of us, but there will be much of new information and interest to the reader in Mr. Maurice's account of the legislation of Henry II. with the aid of the great lawyer, Ralph Glanville, and of Glanville's own com- mentary upon the work.

The foundations of that Constitution and those liberties which we still possess were laid indeed, but they were hardly visible when Stephen Langton took his place, and began his work as an "English popular leader." On the death of Hubert, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1205, the choice of his successor was contested by the monks of Canterbury, the suffragan bishops, and the King, and on their appealing to Rome Innocent HI. rejected both can- didates, and offered them Stephen Langton instead. Of Langton's early life nothing is known, but he was educated at the University of Paris, where he was distinguished as a poet, a philosopher, and a theologian, and where he became known to a student of older standing than himself, the young Roman nobleman Lothario Conti, who was afterwards to rule—or strive to rule—the world as Pope Innocent III. Conti was raised to the Chair of St Peter in 1198, when he appointed Stephen Langton a member of his household, encouraged him to lecture publicly in Rome, and eventually promoted him to the rank of Cardinal, that he might share in his councils and take part in public affairs. " Innocent" (we here quote from Dr. Hook) "had called Langton to Rome that he might have at hand as his counsellor a man of piety and wisdom, a sound lawyer, and at the same time a divine mighty in the Scriptures ;—he reluctantly parted with him in order that the most important see in Western Europe might be properly filled. Innocent stated this in a letter to King John." John resisted the nomination which was to supersede his own choice and his own right of choice, and the well-known contest between the Pope and King began. Langton was consecrated, but obliged to remain excluded from his see, at Pontigny, while England was laid under an interdict, during which negotiations for a reconciliation were carried on by John with Langton as well as with Innocent, and at one period of which Langton came to Dover, and John to Canterbury, though they did not meet, while on another occasion an attempted interview failed because Langton could not obtain adequate securities for his safety, which, indeed, were necessary, when John would say to the Papal envoys in 1211, " You may ask what you will, and I will grant it ; but never shall that Stephen obtain a safe-conduct of force sufficient to prevent me from suspending him by the neck the moment he touches land of mine." Of Langton's conciliatory though dignified temper, and his warm

sympathy with the sufferings of the nation during this period, Mr. Maurice gives proofs from the archbishop's letters to his friends, to the King, and to his suffragans. But the brutality and dishonesty of John brought the negotiations en each occasion to a premature end. In 1211 or 1212 Innocent excommunicated John, and formally freed his subjects from their allegiance ; and Langton and the Bishops of London and Ely carried to Philip of France the call of the Pope to a crusade against the King of England, while the papal legate made a last attempt to obtain John's submission ; and though John had assembled a large army to resist the invasion, Pandulph was able to warn him that nearly all the great men of England were believed to be in communication with the King of France. John surrendered his crown and kingdom to Pandulph, and received it back as a gift from the Pope of Rome. Langton returned to England and met the King at Winchester, where he granted him absolution and removed his excommunication, first requiring him to swear that he would love and defend the Church, and that he would renew all the good laws of his an- cestors, especially those of King Edward, that he would annul the bad ones, would judge his subjects according to the just decrees of his Courts, and would restore his rights to each and all. Upon this solemn engagement, and not upon the suzerainty of the Pope, Langton now and henceforth took his stand. He was from this time the English statesman, the leader of the English nation, and the assertor of the con- stitutional rights and duties of the Crown, the Barons, the Church, and the People against all tyranny and anarchy, and that not the less resolutely and avowedly because tyranny and anarchy were now supported not only by John, but by his master the Pope. While John was in France carrying on the war which ended in the battle of Bovines, the English Barons met iu council in London at the summons and under the presidency of Langton ;

he reminded them of John's oath at Winchester, and he informed them that he hal now found the Charter of Henry I., by which

they might, if they would, bring back liberties which had been lost into their original condition. They received the Charter with acclamation, and swore to demand its enforcement from John. And again, when John returned to England, they swore at a meeting at Bury St. Edmund's that if they could not per- suade John to sign the Charter they would wring it from him by force of arms. One meeting followed another, and though Lang-

ton was so undoubtedly the leader of the Barons, he was- accepted and employed by the King to mediate with them ; but it was not

till armies had been raised and put in motion that John con- sented to affix his seal to Magna Charta at Runnymede. The details of the Charter were adapted to the wants of the time ; but the principles which it recognised, and by recognising raised once more above the mere favour of a prince or even the authority of custom or tradition, were those principles of constitutional govern- ment and freedom which have ever since been bearing new fruit.

The acknowledgment of the rights of the governed and the duties of their governors, the defining and declaring these by legislative

enactment, and the maintaining and enforcing them by Courts of law, and even in the last resort by an appeal to force, —these were the things that the Barons demanded and the King granted ; and the form in which they were granted,—by the advice of those Barons in council,—and the provisions in the charter for calling the like councils in future, were themselves essential parts of the work. For, as Dr. Hook has well observed, "Hitherto the Barons had been accustomed to act each for himself, with a view to the maintenance only of his personal rights. Langton taught them to act in combination,—not only to be lords, but a House of Lords.

Singly they were weak when opposed to the King, the mightiest of the Barons ; as an Order in the State, they were more than his match. In the reign of Henry IL, as we have seen, the Courts of law were developed from the Curia Regis; now we see formed the House of Lords, and henceforth the King's Council be- came a Parliament." Nor is this the leas true because, as Mr. Freeman has shown us, the House of Lords is the old Saxon assembly of the Witan, nor the leas important because the still greater House of Commons had still to be born of this House of Lords.

John immediately obtained the support of his suzerain the Pope, in his endeavours to retract all that he had granted ; Innocent issued bulls declaring the Charter with all its obligations mill and void, and requiring Langton and the Bishops to excom- municate the Barons who did not submit. Langton refused, and was deprived of his archbishopric and suspended from his cleri- cal functions ; and on his going to Rome to remonstrate in person, he was there detained a State prisoner for three years,

and until both John and Innocent were dead. On his return to England he found the political and social anarchy as great as when he left the country, and his few remaining years of life were occupied in renewed endeavours to uphold and secure the laws in Church and State by his old English and statesman-like policy. And when we remember the importance in all after times of the doctrine that taxes should be only granted on condition of the re- dress of grievances and the security of the liberties of the people, we must recognise it among the greatest of Langton's acts that in the council called at London to demand a fifteenth for King Henry III., he required and obtained the special introduction of a clause in the charter thed renewed to declare that the pay- ment was only given in consideration of the liberties thus secured.

Mr. Maurice's account of Langton, which we have mainly fol- lowed, and often in his own words, and his preliminary historical sketch, are drawn throughout from the original sources, though not without reference to the great modern authorities who have collated and illustrated those records. The volume contains many interesting details, including some important documents which are not given at length, even by Dr. Hook ; and if we say that it is not always quite easy reading, we may add that it will amply repay those who read it, whether as a chapter of the constitutional history of England, or as the life of a great Englishman.