alms, and promised a yearly tribute of 1,000
marks.

This abject submission to the Pope was a matter of policy. John cared
nothing for any appearance of personal or national humiliation, and as he
had broken faith with all in England, so, if it should suit his purpose,
would he as readily break faith with Rome. But the immediate advantage of
having the Pope for his protector seemed considerable. "For when once he
had put himself under apostolical protection and made his realms a part of
the patrimony of St. Peter, there was not in the Roman world a sovereign
who durst attack him or would invade his lands, in such awe was Pope
Innocent held above all his predecessors for many years past."[10]

Stephen landed in June, 1213, and at Winchester John was formally absolved
and the coronation oaths were renewed. It was very soon seen what manner of
man the Archbishop was. In August a great gathering of the barons took
place in St. Paul's, and there Langton recited the coronation charter of
Henry I., and told all those assembled that these rights and liberties were
to be recovered; and "the barons swore they would fight for these
liberties, even unto death if it were needful, and the Archbishop promised
that he would help with all his might." The weakness of the barons hitherto
had been their want of cohesion, their endless personal feuds, and the lack
of any feeling of national responsibility. Langton laboured to create a
national party and to win recognition of law and justice for all in
England; and the Great Charter was the issue of his work.

The state of things was intolerable. The whole administration of justice
was corrupt. The decisions of the King's courts were as arbitrary as the
methods employed to enforce sentence. Free men were arrested, evicted,
exiled, and outlawed without even legal warrant or the semblance of a fair
trial. All the machinery of government set up by the Norman kings, and
developed under Henry II., had, in John's hands, become a mere instrument
of despotic extortion, to be used against anybody and everybody, from earl
to villein, who could be fleeced by the King's servants.

John saw the tide rising against him, and endeavoured to divide barons from
Churchmen by proclaiming that the latter should have free and undisturbed
right of election when bishoprics and other ecclesiastical offices were
vacant. But the attempt failed. Langton was too resolute a statesman, and
his conception of the primacy