DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.71755#0018
14
THE BARONS' WAR
CHAP. I
through his own free-will and with the assent of the
baronage of England, freely yields up his kingdom
to Innocent and his Catholic successors, receiving it
back as a fief and paying 1000 marks per annum as
a token of perpetual obligation and concession. Peter's
pence was to be paid as before, and liege homage to be
performed1 if John and the pope met. Had John lived
long enough to be victor in the contest for absolute
power, he would probably have proved as faithless to
this oath as to all others, and it would have passed
harmlessly away: as it was, he lived just long enough
to welcome papal legates and to give the pope every
opportunity to turn the parchment pledge into actual
practice, and then died,— leaving a minor heir to take
the same oath, to be burdened with the same tribute,
to pass his life under the same ecclesiastical tutelage
which formed his early character, and to allow the See
of Rome through its legates to attain a height of power
in England never equalled before or since. In the
light of papal exactions throughout Henry's reign, and
especially in connection with the Sicilian crown, the last
words2 of John's oath read like a mocking prophecy.
Eighteen months after John's surrender of England
to the pope, the king was in worse plight than ever.
Bouvines in France had been fought and lost, and in
1 Actually performed to Nicholas of Tusculum, Ann. Wav., pp.
277, 278.
2 Patriinonium b. Petri .... adjutor ero ad tenendum et defen-
dendum contra omnes homines pro posse meo. Rymer, I., p. 112. Sel.
Chart., p. 286.
THE BARONS' WAR
CHAP. I
through his own free-will and with the assent of the
baronage of England, freely yields up his kingdom
to Innocent and his Catholic successors, receiving it
back as a fief and paying 1000 marks per annum as
a token of perpetual obligation and concession. Peter's
pence was to be paid as before, and liege homage to be
performed1 if John and the pope met. Had John lived
long enough to be victor in the contest for absolute
power, he would probably have proved as faithless to
this oath as to all others, and it would have passed
harmlessly away: as it was, he lived just long enough
to welcome papal legates and to give the pope every
opportunity to turn the parchment pledge into actual
practice, and then died,— leaving a minor heir to take
the same oath, to be burdened with the same tribute,
to pass his life under the same ecclesiastical tutelage
which formed his early character, and to allow the See
of Rome through its legates to attain a height of power
in England never equalled before or since. In the
light of papal exactions throughout Henry's reign, and
especially in connection with the Sicilian crown, the last
words2 of John's oath read like a mocking prophecy.
Eighteen months after John's surrender of England
to the pope, the king was in worse plight than ever.
Bouvines in France had been fought and lost, and in
1 Actually performed to Nicholas of Tusculum, Ann. Wav., pp.
277, 278.
2 Patriinonium b. Petri .... adjutor ero ad tenendum et defen-
dendum contra omnes homines pro posse meo. Rymer, I., p. 112. Sel.
Chart., p. 286.