Canterbury in June, 1207, on
the nomination of Pope Innocent III.; the monks of Canterbury, who had
proposed their own superior, consenting to the appointment, for Langton had
a high reputation for learning and was known to be of exalted character.
But King John, who had wanted a man of his own heart for the
archbishopric--John of Gray, Bishop of Norwich, commonly spoken of as "a
servant of Mammon, and an evil shepherd that devoured his own sheep"--was
enraged, and refusing to acknowledge Langton, defied the Pope, drove the
monks out of the country, and declared that anyone who acknowledged Stephen
Langton as archbishop should be accounted a public enemy. So it came about
that the great English statesman who broke down the foulest and worst
tyranny the land had known, and won for England the Great Charter of its
liberties, was a nominee of the Pope, and was to find himself under the
displeasure of the Papal legate when the Charter had been signed! For six
years John kept Stephen out of Canterbury, while England lay under an
interdict, with its King excommunicate and outside the pale of the Church.
Most of the bishops fled abroad, "fearing the King, but afraid to obey him
for dread of the Pope," and John laid hands on Church property and filled
the royal treasury with the spoils of churchmen and Jews. But in 1213
John's position had become precarious, for the northern barons were
plotting his overthrow, and the Pope had absolved all his subjects from
allegiance, and given sentence that "John should be thrust from his throne
and another worthier than he should reign in his stead," naming Philip of
France as his successor. John was aware that he could not count on the
support of the barons in a war with France, and a prophecy of Peter, the
Wakefield Hermit, that the crown would be lost before Ascension Day, made
him afraid of dying excommunicate. Accordingly John decided to get the Pope
on his side. He agreed to receive Pandulf, the Papal legate; to acknowledge
Stephen; make good the damage done to the Church, and, in addition,
voluntarily ("of our own good free will and by the common counsel of our
barons") surrendered "to God and to the Holy Mother Church of Rome, and to
Pope Innocent and his Catholic successors," the whole realm of England and
Ireland, "with all rights thereunto appertaining, to receive them back and
hold them thenceforth as a feudatory of God and the Roman Church." He swore
fealty to the Pope for both re