DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.71755#0014
10
THE BARONS' WAR
CHAP. I
archbishop successfully, the king had been forced to
call upon the baronage for support; and to resist the
Canon Law, Anglo-Saxon institutions and customs had
been cited:1 the appeal ultimately proved dangerous
to the crown, — memories of the witenagemot were
stirred in the minds of its higher vassals, the lower
baronage began to find community of interests with
Saxon free-holders, and after Normandy had been lost
and race-fusion fairly begun, the movement culminated
in the Magna Charta.2
Reference has been already made2 to the connection
of the religious crises of Henry II. and John witli the
political crises of the same monarchs and Henry III.
As early as 1204 by the appointment of Peter des
Roches as bishop of Winchester, and again, still more
unmistakably, two years later by the method of Lang-
ton's election, Innocent III. had defined his position
toward the independence of the English church; it
was reserved for following years to display in its
fulness his baleful influence upon English popular
liberties.
But while the pope was posing as the champion of
despotism, England reaped the benefit of possessing a
church long the depository of constitutional law, and
which was national and independent by heredity. If
bishop Roger of Salisbury had been the creator of
constitutional machinery, Stephen Langton, archbishop
1 Vide Preamble to Constitutions of Clarendon, Sel. Chart., pp. 137,
138.
2 Pauli, Simon von Montfort, pp. 2, 3. 3 Supra, pp. 5, 9.
THE BARONS' WAR
CHAP. I
archbishop successfully, the king had been forced to
call upon the baronage for support; and to resist the
Canon Law, Anglo-Saxon institutions and customs had
been cited:1 the appeal ultimately proved dangerous
to the crown, — memories of the witenagemot were
stirred in the minds of its higher vassals, the lower
baronage began to find community of interests with
Saxon free-holders, and after Normandy had been lost
and race-fusion fairly begun, the movement culminated
in the Magna Charta.2
Reference has been already made2 to the connection
of the religious crises of Henry II. and John witli the
political crises of the same monarchs and Henry III.
As early as 1204 by the appointment of Peter des
Roches as bishop of Winchester, and again, still more
unmistakably, two years later by the method of Lang-
ton's election, Innocent III. had defined his position
toward the independence of the English church; it
was reserved for following years to display in its
fulness his baleful influence upon English popular
liberties.
But while the pope was posing as the champion of
despotism, England reaped the benefit of possessing a
church long the depository of constitutional law, and
which was national and independent by heredity. If
bishop Roger of Salisbury had been the creator of
constitutional machinery, Stephen Langton, archbishop
1 Vide Preamble to Constitutions of Clarendon, Sel. Chart., pp. 137,
138.
2 Pauli, Simon von Montfort, pp. 2, 3. 3 Supra, pp. 5, 9.