Romans were in Britain, the island was governed by the Roman law; but when they departed, every vestige of their government and of their language departed with them. The Saxons brought in their own laws, or rather customs; for there were no written laws till the time of Ethelred, who was the first Christian king of Kent.

The code of Ethelred still exists, and strongly shows the simplicity of manners in those ancient times. Alfred, and after him Edward the Confessor, also made codes of laws, many of which are still in force. From the number of laws for the preservation of the peace, which are to be found in those ancient codes, it would appear that the Saxons were a most quarrelsome race. Indeed, scarcely any meetings were held in those rude ages either for business or pleasure, without ending in rioting and bloodshed.

King John, as soon as he quitted Runimede, retired sullen and out of humor to the Isle of Wight, where he spent three months in planning schemes for revenging himself on the barons. He sent agents to raise an army of Brabanters, promising them the plunder of the barons' estates. Meanwhile the barons, too much despising the king to believe him capable of any vigorous measures, had made no preparations against him, and were amusing themselves with feastings, tournaments, and bear-baitings, the usual diversions of the times; when John, starting from his concealment, appeared before Rochester castle at the head of an army of foreign soldiers.

A. D. 1216.

The barons were now reduced to great extremities; and in their distress resorted to the worst and weakest measure that could have been thought of. They invited Louis, eldest son of the king of France, to come to their aid, promising him the crown of England, in right of his wife, who was the king's niece. Louis landed with his army at Sandwich, on the 23d of May; he then retook Rochester castle, and entered London

What sort of people do the old codes show the Saxons to have been?
Did a civil war follow the grant of Magna Charta?
What king of France entered London in triumph?

in a sort of triumph, the citizens doing homage to him as their proper sovereign.

It was now king John's turn to fly, and the barons' turn to pursue. Every place submitted to them till they came to Dover. Hubert de Burgh was governor there, and defended the castle so well, that Louis swore a solemn oath that he would not quit its walls till he had taken it, and hanged all the garrison. This oath was the preservation of England; for the delay of the French prince before Dover castle, gave the barons time to reflect on their error in having called in his aid; and many of them abandoned his party, and joined the king.

John by this means mustered once again A. D. 1216. a considerable army; but meeting with

some disasters in his march into Lincolnshire, fatigue and anxiety threw him into a fever. With great difficulty he reached Newark, where he died on the 19th of October, 1216, in the forty-ninth year of his age, and the eighteenth of his reign.

John was twice married. By his first wife he had no children. He had two sons and three daughters by his second wife: Henry, who succeeded him; Richard; Jane married Alexander, king of Scotland; Eleanor married first the earl of Pembroke, secondly, the earl of Leicester; Isabella married Frederick II., emperor of Germany.

It is extraordinary that the reign of the worst king and the worst man that ever wore the crown of England, should be the one that has brought the most lasting good to the nation. The Magna Charta has consecrated the reign of king John to all succeeding ages. Besides this great charter, he had, in the early part of his reign, granted one to the citizens of London, conferring on them many of the privileges they at this day enjoy.

An interdict, was forbidding, or interdicting, divine ser

What circumstance disposed the English barons to abandon the French king?

What was the death of John?

Who were John's family?

What great benefit to the English nation resulted from John?

Was John generous, or selfish-superstitious, or religious-pusillanimous, or courageous? (Ans. the pupil's judgment.)

What was an interdict?

vice to be publicly performed. When a nation was under an interdict, the churches were shut; the bells were not rung; the dead were buried in ditches and holes, without the performance of the funeral service; diversions of all kinds were forbidden; and every thing wore an appearance of mourning and gloom.

Excommunication was a worse sentence still, and was levelled at persons, as an interdict generally was at nations. A person who was excommunicated, was considered as unholy and polluted; every one was forbidden to come near him, or to render him any friendly offices. Thus, if the sentence could have been fully enforced, it was possible for the most potent monarch to become, by a single mandate of the pope, a miserable outcast.

In this age, robbery was common. the reigns of John and his successor.

Robin Hood lived in
He died in the year

1247. He is said to have been a man of birth and fortune, and to have squandered his patrimony. He then, as the story goes, betook himself to the woods and forests, and became, if such a phrase be proper, a sort of gentleman robber; and pacified his conscience by robbing only the rich, and by being beneficent to the poor. But his fame is more owing to the ballads that have been made on him, than to any of his own good or bad deeds.

CHAP. XIII.

HENRY III.

[Years after Christ, 1216-1272.]

When King John died, his eldest son Henry, called Henry of Winchester, from the place of his birth, was only eight years old. . The Earl of Pembroke who was a wise and good man, was made protector of the kingdom,

What was excommunication?

Who was a famous robber in king John's time?
Who succeeded John, and who was the protector?

J

and governor of the young king; and while he lived, the youth and incapacity of Henry were of no material disadvantage to the country. Pembroke, by renewing the great charter and seeing that the articles of it were duly executed, brought back most of the rebellious barons to the royal cause.

A. D. 1217.

Louis continued in England some months

after the death of John, but without being able to increase the number of his partisans; and on the 19th day of May, he encountered the royal army at Lincoln, and was so completely beaten in a battle which was fought in the streets of that town, that he was glad to make peace with the protector, and to withdraw with the remnant of his army into France.

The earl, of Pembroke governed the kingdom with honour, wisdom, and success, till 1219, when, to the misfortune of England and its King, he died. Hubert de Burgh, and Peter de Roches, a native of Poitou, were appointed to succeed him.

When the king was sixteen years old, he A. D. 1223. was declared of age to govern by himself. In 1224, Philip, king of France, died, and his son Louis succeeded him; but he also died soon after, and left an infant son, Louis the Ninth, under the guardianship of his mother, Blanche of Castile. Henry thought this would be a good opportunity to attempt the recovery of Normandy, and led an army there in 1230; but he misconducted the expedition to such a degree, that, instead of obtaining any advantages, he returned in a few months to England, covered with disgrace.

A. D. 1236. Henry married Eleanor, daughter of the earl of Provence, and he immediately raised her friends and relations to some of the highest offices of the state which gave great offence to the English nobles. This king's most hurtful folly was the weakness with which he attached himself to strangers, particularly to foreigners, and the fickleness and caprice with which he cast off old favorites to set up new ones.

On what account did the French king make peace with England? When did the earl of Pembroke die, and who succeeded him? What happened to Henry in Normandy?

What was the principal folly of Henry's government?

And he was also so profuse to his favorites, that his treasures were soon exhausted, and he was often obliged to apply to parliament (as the great council of the nation began about this time to be called) for a supply of money. By these proceedings he made himself every year more and more despised, and many plans were formed for deposing him.

The pope, profiting by Henry's imbecility, made many and great encroachments on the rights of the church of England. The benefices were by his means filled with Italians, and he contrived to intermeddle on all occasions. In 1255 he led the king into great and useless expense, by conferring on his second son Edmund the title of king of Sicily, which he did in the hope of revenging a quarrel of his own with Mainfroy, king of Sicily, by drawing on Henry to invade that island. All the English barons refused to give the least assistance to this project. The king, finding every method fail of extorting money from his. subjects for this expedition, resorted to one that was till then unknown. He gave to Italian merchants bills of exchange to a great amount, for money pretended to be advanced by them for the Sicilian war. These bills were drawn on all the prelates of England, who at first refused to pay the demands thus made on them; but through the remonstrances of the pope they at length submitted.

The absence of the king's brother, who A. D. 1258. went to Germany, and of many nobles who were attached to the royal cause, gave an opportunity to the disaffected barons of bringing about the rebellion they had planned. Simon De Montfort, earl of Leicester, who had once been one of the king's favorites, took the lead in this rebellion. The barons assembled at Oxford on the 11th June, 1258, and obliged the king, and his eldest son, then eighteen years of age, to agree to a treaty, by which twenty-four of their own body, at the head of whom was De Montfort, had authority given them to reform all abuses.

Did the Pope continue to meddle in the affairs of England?

Did the English barons engage in an expedition planned by the pope, and when were bills of exchange invented?

Did the imbecility of Henry induce a rebellion in 1258?