Feudal Grievances and Magna Carta, I.: The Immediate Causes of the Crisis.

Many attempts have been made to show why the storm, long brewing, broke at last in 1214, and culminated precisely in June of the following year. Sir William Blackstone shows how carefully historians have sought for some one specific feature or event, occurring in these years, of such moment as by itself to account for the rebellion crowned with success at Runnymede. Matthew Paris, he tells us, attributes the whole movement to the sudden discovery of Henry I.’s Charter, and most of the chroniclers assign John’s inordinate debauchery as the cause of the dissensions, dwelling on his personal misdeeds, real and imaginary. “Sordida foedatur foedante Johanne, gehenna.” Blackstone himself suggests a third cause, the appointment as Regent in John’s absence of the hated alien and upstart, Peter des Roches, and his misconduct in that office.

Of John’s arrogance and cruelty there is abundant testimony; but the causes from which Magna Carta took its rise were more deeply rooted in the past. The very success of Henry Plantagenet in restoring order in England, for effecting which special powers had been allowed to him, made the continuance of these powers unnecessary. From the day of Henry’s death, if not earlier, forces were at work which only required to be combined in order to control the licence of the Crown. When the battle of order had been won—the complete overthrow of the rebellion of 1173–4 may here be taken as the crucial date—the battle of liberty had, almost necessarily, to be begun.

The wonder is that the crisis was so long delayed. Events, however, were not ripe for rebellion before John’s accession, and a favourable occasion did not occur previous to 1215. The doctrine of momentum accounts in politics for the long continuance of old institutions in a condition even of unstable equilibrium; an entirely rotten system of government may remain for ages until at the destined moment comes the final shock. John conferred a boon on future generations, when by his arrogance and his misfortunes he combined against him all classes and interests in the community.

The chief factor in the coalition that ultimately triumphed over John was the baronial party, led by those strenuous nobles of the north, who were goaded into opposition by their own personal and class wrongs, not by any altruistic promptings to sacrifice themselves for the common good. Their complaints, as they appear in the imperishable record of Magna Carta, are grounded on technical rules of feudal usage, not upon any broad basis of constitutional principle.

The grievances most bitterly resented may be ranged under one or other of two heads—increase in the weight of feudal obligations and infringement of feudal jurisdictions: the Crown, while it exacted the fullest measure of services legally exigible, curtailed those rights and privileges which had originally balanced the obligations. The barons were compelled to give more, while they received less. Each of these heads calls for separate and detailed treatment.

The grievances of the barons, however, were not the only wrongs calling for redress. It is probable that the baronial party, if they had acted in isolation, would have failed in 1215 as they had already failed in 1173. If the Crown had retained the active sympathy of Church and common people, the King might have successfully defied the baronage as his father had done before him. John had, on the contrary, broadened the basis of opposition by oppressing the mercantile classes and the peasantry. The order–loving townsmen had been willing to purchase protection from Henry at the price of heavy taxation: John continued to exact the price, but failed to furnish good government in return. Far from protecting the humble from oppression, he was himself the chief oppressor; and he let loose his foreign favourites as deputy oppressors in all the numerous offices of sheriff, castellan, and bailiff. Far from using the perfected machinery of Exchequer, Curia, and local administration in the interests of good government, John valued them merely as instruments of extortion and outrage—as ministers to his lust and greed.

The lower orders were by no means exempt from the increased taxation which proved so galling to the feudal tenants. When John, during his quarrel with Rome, repaid each new anathema of the Pope by fresh acts of spoliation against the English Church, the sufferings of the clergy were shared by the poor. In confiscating the goods of monasteries, he destroyed the chief provision for poor–relief known to the thirteenth century. The alienation of the affections of the great masses of lower–class Englishmen thus effected was never wholly undone, even after the reconciliation of John with the Holy See. Notwithstanding the completeness and even abjectness of John’s surrender, he took no special pains to reinstate himself in the good graces of the Church at home. Innocent, secure at the Lateran, had issued his thunderbolts; and John’s counterstrokes had fallen, not on him, but on the English clergy. The measures taken, in 1213 and afterwards, to make good to these victims some part of the heavy losses sustained, were inadequate.

After 1213, John’s alliance with Rome brought new dangers in its train. The united action of two autocrats, each claiming supreme powers, lay and spiritual respectively, threatened to annihilate the freedom of the English nation and the English Church. “The country saw that the submission of John to Innocent placed its liberty, temporally and spiritually, at his mercy; and immediately demanded safeguards.”

This union of tyrants led to another union which checkmated it, for the baronial opposition allied itself with the ecclesiastical opposition. The urgency of their common need brought prelates and barons into line—for the moment. A leader was found in Stephen Langton, who succeeded in preventing the somewhat divergent interests of the two estates from splitting them asunder.

All things were thus ripe for rebellion, and even for united rebellion; an opportunity only was required. Such an opportunity came in a tempting form in 1214; for the King had then lost prestige and power by his failure in the wars with France. He had lost the friendship of the English Church. His unpopularity and vacillating nature had been thoroughly demonstrated. Further, he had himself, in 1191, when plotting against his absent brother Richard, successfully ousted the Regent Longchamp from office, thus furnishing an example of successfully concerted action against the central government.

The result was that, when the barons began active operations, not only had they no opposition to dread from churchman or merchant, from yeoman or peasant, but they might count on the sympathy of all and the active co–operation of many. Further, John’s policy of misrule had combined against him two interests usually opposed to each other, the party of progress and the party of reaction. The influence of each of these may be clearly read in various chapters of Magna Carta.

The progressive party consisted mainly of the heads of the more recently created baronial houses, men trained in the administrative methods of Henry II., who desired that his system of government should be properly enforced. They demanded that the King should conduct the business of Exchequer and Curia according to the rules laid down by Henry. Routine and order under the new system were what this party desired, and not a return to the unruly days of Stephen. Many of the innovations of the great Angevin had now been loyally accepted by all classes of the nation; and these accordingly found a permanent resting–place in the provisions of the Charter. In temporary co–operation with this party, the usually rival party of reaction was willing to combine for the moment against the common enemy. There still existed, in John’s reign, magnates of the old feudal school, who hoped to wrest from the King’s weakened hand some measure of feudal independence. They had accepted such reforms as suited them, but still bitterly opposed many others. In particular, they resisted the encroachments of the royal courts of law which were gradually superseding their private jurisdictions. For the moment, John’s crafty policy, so well devised to gain immediate ends, and so unwise in the light of subsequent history, combined these two streams, usually ready to thwart each other, into a united opposition to his throne. Attacked at the same moment by the votaries of traditional usage and by the votaries of reform, by the barons, the trading classes, and the clergy, he had no course left him but to surrender at discretion. The movement which culminated at Runnymede may thus best be understood as the resultant of a number of different but converging forces, some of which were progressive and some reactionary.