A Child's History of England

by Dickens, Charles

  their own King should be restored to them after hundreds of years;

  and they believed that the prophecy would be fulfilled in Arthur;

  that the time would come when he would rule them with a crown of

  Brittany upon his head; and when neither King of France nor King of

  England would have any power over them. When Arthur found himself

  riding in a glittering suit of armour on a richly caparisoned

  horse, at the head of his train of knights and soldiers, he began

  to believe this too, and to consider old Merlin a very superior

  prophet.

  He did not know - how could he, being so innocent and

  inexperienced? - that his little army was a mere nothing against

  the power of the King of England. The French King knew it; but the

  poor boy's fate was little to him, so that the King of England was

  worried and distressed. Therefore, King Philip went his way into

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  Normandy and Prince Arthur went his way towards Mirebeau, a French

  town near Poictiers, both very well pleased.

  Prince Arthur went to attack the town of Mirebeau, because his

  grandmother Eleanor, who has so often made her appearance in this

  history (and who had always been his mother's enemy), was living

  there, and because his Knights said, 'Prince, if you can take her

  prisoner, you will be able to bring the King your uncle to terms!'

  But she was not to be easily taken. She was old enough by this

  time - eighty - but she was as full of stratagem as she was full of

  years and wickedness. Receiving intelligence of young Arthur's

  approach, she shut herself up in a high tower, and encouraged her

  soldiers to defend it like men. Prince Arthur with his little army

  besieged the high tower. King John, hearing how matters stood,

  came up to the rescue, with HIS army. So here was a strange

  family-party! The boy-Prince besieging his grandmother, and his

  uncle besieging him!

  This position of affairs did not last long. One summer night King

  John, by treachery, got his men into the town, surprised Prince

  Arthur's force, took two hundred of his knights, and seized the

  Prince himself in his bed. The Knights were put in heavy irons,

  and driven away in open carts drawn by bullocks, to various

  dungeons where they were most inhumanly treated, and where some of

  them were starved to death. Prince Arthur was sent to the castle

  of Falaise.

  One day, while he was in prison at that castle, mournfully thinking

  it strange that one so young should be in so much trouble, and

  looking out of the small window in the deep dark wall, at the

  summer sky and the birds, the door was softly opened, and he saw

  his uncle the King standing in the shadow of the archway, looking

  very grim.

  'Arthur,' said the King, with his wicked eyes more on the stone

  floor than on his nephew, 'will you not trust to the gentleness,

  the friendship, and the truthfulness of your loving uncle?'

  'I will tell my loving uncle that,' replied the boy, 'when he does

  me right. Let him restore to me my kingdom of England, and then

  come to me and ask the question.'

  The King looked at him and went out. 'Keep that boy close

  prisoner,' said he to the warden of the castle.

  Then, the King took secret counsel with the worst of his nobles how

  the Prince was to be got rid of. Some said, 'Put out his eyes and

  keep him in prison, as Robort of Normandy was kept.' Others said,

  'Have him stabbed.' Others, 'Have him hanged.' Others, 'Have him

  poisoned.'

  King John, feeling that in any case, whatever was done afterwards,

  it would be a satisfaction to his mind to have those handsome eyes

  burnt out that had looked at him so proudly while his own royal

  eyes were blinking at the stone floor, sent certain ruffians to

  Falaise to blind the boy with red-hot irons. But Arthur so

  pathetically entreated them, and shed such piteous tears, and so

  appealed to HUBERT DE BOURG (or BURGH), the warden of the castle,

  who had a love for him, and was an honourable, tender man, that

  Hubert could not bear it. To his eternal honour he prevented the

  torture from being performed, and, at his own risk, sent the

  savages away.

  The chafed and disappointed King bethought himself of the stabbing

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  suggestion next, and, with his shuffling manner and his cruel face,

  proposed it to one William de Bray. 'I am a gentleman and not an

  executioner,' said William de Bray, and left the presence with

  disdain.

  But it was not difficult for a King to hire a murderer in those

  days. King John found one for his money, and sent him down to the

  castle of Falaise. 'On what errand dost thou come?' said Hubert to

  this fellow. 'To despatch young Arthur,' he returned. 'Go back to

  him who sent thee,' answered Hubert, 'and say that I will do it!'

  King John very well knowing that Hubert would never do it, but that

  he courageously sent this reply to save the Prince or gain time,

  despatched messengers to convey the young prisoner to the castle of

  Rouen.

  Arthur was soon forced from the good Hubert - of whom he had never

  stood in greater need than then - carried away by night, and lodged

  in his new prison: where, through his grated window, he could hear

  the deep waters of the river Seine, rippling against the stone wall

  below.

  One dark night, as he lay sleeping, dreaming perhaps of rescue by

  those unfortunate gentlemen who were obscurely suffering and dying

  in his cause, he was roused, and bidden by his jailer to come down

  the staircase to the foot of the tower. He 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. Then, Arthur, in the

  darkness, was hurriedly drawn into a solitary boat. And in that

  boat, he found his uncle and one other man.

  He knelt to them, and prayed them not to murder him. Deaf to his

  entreaties, 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 beheld by mortal eyes.

  The news of this atrocious murder being spread in England, awakened

  a hatred of the King (already odious for his many vices, and for

  his having stolen away and married a noble lady while his own wife

  was living) that never slept again through his whole reign. In

  Brittany, the indignation was intense. Arthur's own sister ELEANOR

  was in the power of John and shut up in a convent at Bristol, but

  his half-sister ALICE was in Brittany. The people chose her, and

  the murdered prince's father-in-law, the last husband of Constance,

  to represent them; and carried their fiery complaints to King

  Philip. King Philip summoned King John (as the holder of territory

  in France) to come before him and defend
himself. King John

  refusing to appear, King Philip declared him false, perjured, and

  guilty; and again made war. In a little time, by conquering the

  greater part of his French territory, King Philip deprived him of

  one-third of his dominions. And, through all the fighting that

  took place, King John was always found, either to be eating and

  drinking, like a gluttonous fool, when the danger was at a

  distance, or to be running away, like a beaten cur, when it was

  near.

  You might suppose that when he was losing his dominions at this

  rate, and when his own nobles cared so little for him or his cause

  that they plainly refused to follow his banner out of England, he

  had enemies enough. But he made another enemy of the Pope, which

  he did in this way.

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  The Archbishop of Canterbury dying, and the junior monks of that

  place wishing to get the start of the senior monks in the

  appointment of his successor, met together at midnight, secretly

  elected a certain REGINALD, and sent him off to Rome to get the

  Pope's approval. The senior monks and the King soon finding this

  out, and being very angry about it, the junior monks gave way, and

  all the monks together elected the Bishop of Norwich, who was the

  King's favourite. The Pope, hearing the whole story, declared that

  neither election would do for him, and that HE elected STEPHEN

  LANGTON. The monks submitting to the Pope, the King turned them

  all out bodily, and banished them as traitors. The Pope sent three

  bishops to the King, to threaten him with an Interdict. The King

  told the bishops that if any Interdict were laid upon his kingdom,

  he would tear out the eyes and cut off the noses of all the monks

  he could lay hold of, and send them over to Rome in that

  undecorated state as a present for their master. The bishops,

  nevertheless, soon published the Interdict, and fled.

  After it had lasted a year, the Pope proceeded to his next step;

  which was Excommunication. King John was declared excommunicated,

  with all the usual ceremonies. The King was so incensed at this,

  and was made so desperate by the disaffection of his Barons and the

  hatred of his people, that it is said he even privately sent

  ambassadors to the Turks in Spain, offering to renounce his

  religion and hold his kingdom of them if they would help him. It

  is related that the ambassadors were admitted to the presence of

  the Turkish Emir through long lines of Moorish guards, and that

  they found the Emir with his eyes seriously fixed on the pages of a

  large book, from which he never once looked up. That they gave him

  a letter from the King containing his proposals, and were gravely

  dismissed. That presently the Emir sent for one of them, and

  conjured him, by his faith in his religion, to say what kind of man

  the King of England truly was? That the ambassador, thus pressed,

  replied that the King of England was a false tyrant, against whom

  his own subjects would soon rise. And that this was quite enough

  for the Emir.

  Money being, in his position, the next best thing to men, King John

  spared no means of getting it. He set on foot another oppressing

  and torturing of the unhappy Jews (which was quite in his way), and

  invented a new punishment for one wealthy Jew of Bristol. Until

  such time as that Jew should produce a certain large sum of money,

  the King sentenced him to be imprisoned, and, every day, to have

  one tooth violently wrenched out of his head - beginning with the

  double teeth. For seven days, the oppressed man bore the daily

  pain and lost the daily tooth; but, on the eighth, he paid the

  money. With the treasure raised in such ways, the King made an

  expedition into Ireland, where some English nobles had revolted.

  It was one of the very few places from which he did not run away;

  because no resistance was shown. He made another expedition into

  Wales - whence he DID run away in the end: but not before he had

  got from the Welsh people, as hostages, twenty-seven young men of

  the best families; every one of whom he caused to be slain in the

  following year.

  To Interdict and Excommunication, the Pope now added his last

  sentence; Deposition. He proclaimed John no longer King, absolved

  all his subjects from their allegiance, and sent Stephen Langton

  and others to the King of France to tell him that, if he would

  invade England, he should be forgiven all his sins - at least,

  should be forgiven them by the Pope, if that would do.

  As there was nothing that King Philip desired more than to invade

  England, he collected a great army at Rouen, and a fleet of

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  seventeen hundred ships to bring them over. But the English

  people, however bitterly they hated the King, were not a people to

  suffer invasion quietly. They flocked to Dover, where the English

  standard was, in such great numbers to enrol themselves as

  defenders of their native land, that there were not provisions for

  them, and the King could only select and retain sixty thousand.

  But, at this crisis, the Pope, who had his own reasons for

  objecting to either King John or King Philip being too powerful,

  interfered. He entrusted a legate, whose name was PANDOLF, with

  the easy task of frightening King John. He sent him to the English

  Camp, from France, to terrify him with exaggerations of King

  Philip's power, and his own weakness in the discontent of the

  English Barons and people. Pandolf discharged his commission so

  well, that King John, in a wretched panic, consented to acknowledge

  Stephen Langton; to resign his kingdom 'to God, Saint Peter, and

  Saint Paul' - which meant the Pope; and to hold it, ever

  afterwards, by the Pope's leave, on payment of an annual sum of

  money. To this shameful contract he publicly bound himself in the

  church of the Knights Templars at Dover: where he laid at the

  legate's feet a part of the tribute, which the legate haughtily

  trampled upon. But they DO say, that this was merely a genteel

  flourish, and that he was afterwards seen to pick it up and pocket

  it.

  There was an unfortunate prophet, the name of Peter, who had

  greatly increased King John's terrors by predicting that he would

  be unknighted (which the King supposed to signify that he would

  die) before the Feast of the Ascension should be past. That was

  the day after this humiliation. When the next morning came, and

  the King, who had been trembling all night, found himself alive and

  safe, he ordered the prophet - and his son too - to be dragged

  through the streets at the tails of horses, and then hanged, for

  having frightened him.

  As King John had now submitted, the Pope, to King Philip's great

  astonishment, took him under his protection, and informed King

  Philip that he found he could not give him leave to invade England.

  The angry Philip resolved to do it without his leave but he gained

 
nothing and lost much; for, the English, commanded by the Earl of

  Salisbury, went over, in five hundred ships, to the French coast,

  before the French fleet had sailed away from it, and utterly

  defeated the whole.

  The Pope then took off his three sentences, one after another, and

  empowered Stephen Langton publicly to receive King John into the

  favour of the Church again, and to ask him to dinner. The King,

  who hated Langton with all his might and main - and with reason

  too, for he was a great and a good man, with whom such a King could

  have no sympathy - pretended to cry and to be VERY grateful. There

  was a little difficulty about settling how much the King should pay

  as a recompense to the clergy for the losses he had caused them;

  but, the end of it was, that the superior clergy got a good deal,

  and the inferior clergy got little or nothing - which has also

  happened since King John's time, I believe.

  When all these matters were arranged, the King in his triumph

  became more fierce, and false, and insolent to all around him than

  he had ever been. An alliance of sovereigns against King Philip,

  gave him an opportunity of landing an army in France; with which he

  even took a town! But, on the French King's gaining a great

  victory, he ran away, of course, and made a truce for five years.

  And now the time approached when he was to be still further

  humbled, and made to feel, if he could feel anything, what a

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  wretched creature he was. Of all men in the world, Stephen Langton

  seemed raised up by Heaven to oppose and subdue him. When he

  ruthlessly burnt and destroyed the property of his own subjects,

  because their Lords, the Barons, would not serve him abroad,

  Stephen Langton fearlessly reproved and threatened him. When he

  swore to restore the laws of King Edward, or the laws of King Henry

  the First, Stephen Langton knew his falsehood, and pursued him

  through all his evasions. When the Barons met at the abbey of

  Saint Edmund's-Bury, to consider their wrongs and the King's

  oppressions, Stephen Langton roused them by his fervid words to

  demand a solemn charter of rights and liberties from their perjured

  master, and to swear, one by one, on the High Altar, that they

  would have it, or would wage war against him to the death. When

  the King hid himself in London from the Barons, and was at last