ney, which was laid at his feet
as an earnest of the subjection of the kingdom; an insolence of which,
however offensive to all the English, no one present, except the
archbishop of Dublin, dared to take any notice. But though Pandolf had
brought the king to submit to these base conditions, he still refused
to free him from the excommunication and interdict, till an estimation
should be taken of the losses of the ecclesiastics, and full
compensation and restitution should be made them.

John, reduced to this abject situation under a foreign power, still
showed the same disposition to tyrannize over his subjects, which had
been the chief cause of all his misfortunes. One Peter of Pomfret, a
hermit, had foretold that the king, this very year, should lose his
crown; and for that rash prophecy, he had been thrown into prison in
Corfe castle. Johfi now determined to bring him to punishment as an
impostor; and though the man pleaded that his prophecy was fulfilled,
and that the king had lost the royal and independent crown which he
formerly wore, the defence was supposed to aggravate his guilt: he was
dragged at horses' tails to the town of Warham, and there hanged on a
gibbet with his son.[*]

When Pandolf, after receiving the homage of John, returned to France,
he congratulated Philip on the success of his pious enterprise; and
informed him that John, moved by the terror of the French arms, had now
come to a just sense of his guilt; had returned to obedience under
the apostolic see; had even consented to do homage to the pope for
his dominions; and having thus made his kingdom a part of St. Peter's
patrimony, had rendered it impossible for any Christian prince, without
the most manifest and most flagrant impiety, to attack him.[**] Philip
was enraged on receiving this intelligence: he exclaimed, that having,
at the pope's instigation, undertaken an expedition which had cost him
above sixty thousand pounds sterling, he was frustrated of his purpose,
at the time when its success was become infallible: he complained that
all the expense had fallen upon him; all the advantages had accrued to
Innocent: he threatened to be no longer the dupe of these hypocritical
pretences: and assembling his vassals, he laid before them the ill
treatment which he had received, exposed the interested and fraudulent
conduct of the pope, and required their assistance to execute his
enterprise against England, in which he told them, that notwithsta