hich has been likened many times to the Great Charter
conceded to his barons by King John of England seven years earlier.
The precise purport of the Golden Bull is somewhat doubtful. By some
the instrument has been understood to have comprised a virtual
surrender on the part of the crown in the interest of a class of (p. 447)
insolent and self-seeking nobles with which the country was cursed. By
others it has been interpreted as a measure designed to strengthen the
crown by winning the support of the mass of the lesser nobles against
the few greater ones.[647] The exemption of all nobles from taxation
was confirmed; all were exempted likewise from arbitrary arrest and
punishment. On the other hand, it was forbidden expressly that the
titles and holdings of lords-lieutenant should become hereditary. The
most reasonable conclusion is that the instrument represents a
compromise designed to afford a working arrangement in a period of
unusual stress between crown and nobility. Although the document was
amplified in 1231 and its guarantees were placed under the special
guardianship of the Church, it does not appear that its positive
effects in the period immediately following were pronounced. The
Golden Bull, none the less, has ever been regarded as the foundation
of Hungarian constitutional liberty. As such, it was confirmed
specifically in the coronation oath of every Hapsburg sovereign from
the sixteenth to the eighteenth century.

[Footnote 647: J. Andrassy, Development of
Hungarian Constitutional Liberty (London, 1908),
93.]

*494. Three Centuries of Constitutional Unsettlement.*--The last century
of the Arpad dynasty, which was ended in 1308, was a period of
depression and of revolution. The weakness of the later Arpads, the
ruin wrought by the Tatar invasion of 1241-1242, the infiltration of
feudalism, and perennial civil discord subverted the splendid
monarchical establishment of King Stephen and brought the country into
virtual subjection to a small body of avaricious nobles. The Arpads
were succeeded by two Angevin princes from the kingdom of
Naples--Charles I. (1310-1342) and Louis I. (1342-1382)--under whom
notable progress was made toward the rehabilitation of the royal
power. Yet in the midst of their reforms appeared the first
foreshadowings of that great Turkish onslaught by which eventually the
independent Hungarian monarchy was destined to be annih