him or his cause that they plainly
refused to follow his banner out of England, he had enemies enough. But he
made another enemy of the Pope, which he did in this way.

The Archbishop of Canterbury dying, and the junior monks of that place
wishing to get the start of the senior monks in the appointment of his
successor, met together at midnight, secretly elected a certain Reginald,
and sent him off to Rome to get the Pope's approval. The senior monks and
the King soon finding this out, and being very angry about it, the junior
monks gave way, and all the monks together elected the Bishop of Norwich,
who was the King's favorite. The Pope, hearing the whole story, declared
that neither election would do for him, and that _he_ elected Stephen
Langton. The monks submitting to the Pope, the King turned them all out
bodily, and banished them as traitors.--The Pope sent three bishops to the
King, to threaten him with an Interdict. The King told the bishops that if
any Interdict were laid upon his kingdom, he would tear out the eyes and
cut off the noses of all the monks he could lay hold of, and send them
over to Rome in that undecorated state as a present for their master. The
bishops, nevertheless, soon published the Interdict, and fled.

After it had lasted a year, the Pope proceeded to his next step; which was
excommunication. King John was declared excommunicated, with all the usual
ceremonies. The King was so incensed at this, and was made so desperate by
the disaffection of his barons and the hatred of his people, that it is
said that he even privately sent embassadors to the Turks in Spain,
offering to renounce his religion and hold his kingdom of them if they
would help him. It is related that the embassadors were admitted to the
presence of the Turkish Emir, through long lines of Moorish guards, and
that they found the Emir with his eyes seriously fixed on the pages of a
large book from which he never once looked up. That they gave him a letter
from the King containing his proposals, and were gravely dismissed. That
presently the Emir sent for one of them, and conjured him, by his faith in
his religion, to say what kind of man the King of England truly was? That
the embassador, thus pressed, replied that the King of England was a false
tyrant, against whom his own subjects would soon rise. And that this was
quite enough for the Emir.

Money being, in his position, the next best thing to men, King John spared
no mean