pose and subdue him. When he ruthlessly burnt and destroyed the
property of his own subjects, because their Lords, the Barons, would not
serve him abroad, Stephen Langton fearlessly reproved and threatened him.
When he swore to restore the laws of King Edward, or the laws of King
Henry the First, Stephen Langton knew his falsehood, and pursued him
through all his evasions. When the Barons met at the abbey of Saint
Edmund's-Bury, to consider their wrongs and the King's oppressions,
Stephen Langton roused them by his fervid words to demand a solemn
charter of rights and liberties from their perjured master, and to swear,
one by one, on the High Altar, that they would have it, or would wage war
against him to the death. When the King hid himself in London from the
Barons, and was at last obliged to receive them, they told him roundly
they would not believe him unless Stephen Langton became a surety that he
would keep his word. When he took the Cross to invest himself with some
interest, and belong to something that was received with favour, Stephen
Langton was still immovable. When he appealed to the Pope, and the Pope
wrote to Stephen Langton in behalf of his new favourite, Stephen Langton
was deaf, even to the Pope himself, and saw before him nothing but the
welfare of England and the crimes of the English King.

At Easter-time, the Barons assembled at Stamford, in Lincolnshire, in
proud array, and, marching near to Oxford where the King was, delivered
into the hands of Stephen Langton and two others, a list of grievances.
'And these,' they said, 'he must redress, or we will do it for
ourselves!' When Stephen Langton told the King as much, and read the
list to him, he went half mad with rage. But that did him no more good
than his afterwards trying to pacify the Barons with lies. They called
themselves and their followers, 'The army of God and the Holy Church.'
Marching through the country, with the people thronging to them
everywhere (except at Northampton, where they failed in an attack upon
the castle), they at last triumphantly set up their banner in London
itself, whither the whole land, tired of the tyrant, seemed to flock to
join them. Seven knights alone, of all the knights in England, remained
with the King; who, reduced to this strait, at last sent the Earl of
Pembroke to the Barons to say that he approved of everything, and would
meet them to sign their charter when they would. 'Then,' said the
Barons