Samuel Johnson

“ And that which heartened them most was this, that they were resolutely fighting for their antient laws and liberties; like the Trojans from whom they were descended, and with an original constancy. “Woe to the wretched English, that are trampled upon by every foreigner, and suffer their antient liberties of the realm to be puffed out and extinguished, and are not ashamed of this, when they are taught better by the example of the Welch. O England! thou art justly reputed the bondwoman of other countries, and beneath them all: what thy natives earn hardly, aliens snatch away and carry off!” ”

“ The marshal replies “It is true, the King is richer and more powerful than I; but he is not more powerful than God, who is justice itself, in whom I trust in the maintenance and prosecution of mine and the kingdom’s right: nor do I trust in foreigners, nor will ever seek their aid, unless, which God forbid! I shall be compelled to it by some unexpected and immutable necessity: and I know full well that the King can bring seven to my one; and truly, I believe in the way that he is in, he will soon bring more into the realm, than he will be able to get out again.” ”

“ I am grieved for you, at the thoughts of your desolation and destruction, because you are wholly ignorant of the perils that hang over your heads; for Lewis has taken an oath, and sixteen earls and barons of France with him, that, if ever he get England, and be crowned King, he will condemn all the barons that are now in arms with him against K. John, to perpetual banishment, as traitors against their sovereign lord, and will extirpate the whole race of them out of the land. ”

“ It is well indeed for us, that our ancestors lived before us, and with the expence of their blood recovered the English rights for us, and saved them out of the fire; otherwise we had been sealed up in bondage, and should have had neither any English rights to defend, nor their noble example to justify such a defence, but should have been in as profound an ignorance that ever there were any such fights, as the barons themselves were of Henry the first’s charter. For in all the steps the barons took we followed them. Did they take arms for the security of their liberties? ”

“ And if we had miscarried in our affair, we had not been called rebels, but treated as such; and the bishop of London and all our worthies had made but a blue business of it, without putting on the prince of Orange’s livery. And therefore it is great ingratitude in those that receive any benefit or protection by this happy revolution, to blemish the cause of the barons, for it is the same they live by; and as for those that had a hand in it, to call the baron’s cause a rebellion, is utterly unaccountable, and like men that are not of their own side. ”

“ Paris calls them, seemed to have prepensed malice against mankind; and being led on “a crudeli rege, imò cruento tyranno,” by a cruel King, nay, it was a bloody tyrant; no furies could put innocent people in cold blood, of all ages and conditions, to more exquisite tortures, nor sport themselves more in making havoc and desolation than they did. And with this horrid ravage he over-run England, and proceeded as far as Berwick in half a year’s time; all the castles of the barons falling to him, either surrendered, or for the most part abandoned. ”

“ If any hold of the King by feefarm, by soccage, or burgage, and of any other by knights-service, the King shall not have the custody of the heir, nor of his lands that are holden of the fee of another, by reason of such burgage, soccage, of fee-farm; nor ought the King to have the custody of such burgage, soccage, or fee-farm: and no freeman shall lose his degree of knighthood by reason of petty serjeanties, as when a man holds lands, rendering therefore a knife, an arrow, or the like.
No bailiff shall put any man to his law upon his own bare saying, without faithful witnesses. ”

“ I should be loth to say, that the Kings of England were not all along as good men as their lords of France, or that the barons of England were not good enough to assert their rights against any body, but this I do say, that it was always lawful for vassals to right themselves even while they were vassals, and without throwing up their homage and fealty: for that was never done till they declared themselves irreconcilable enemies, and were upon terms of defiance. ”

“ Now these being the undoubted rights of the kingdom, their antient laws, and liberties, and birthright, we have the less reason to be sollicitous in what manner they shall at any time recover them: let them look to that, who violently or fraudulently keep them from them. For it would be a ridiculous thing in our law, for a man to have an estate in land, and he could not come at it. The law will give him a way. If the law gives the King royal mines, it gives him a power to dig in any man’s land where they are, that he may come at his own. ”

“ All dukes, marquisses, earls, viscounts, and barons are not only peers of the realm, but peers amongst themselves; so that the most inferior baron is the peer of the greatest duke. The rest of the people are called the commoners, without distinction, by which the poorest labourer is the peer of every one under the degree of a baron. The peers of the realm from this noble privilege, established or revived by King Alfred, are judged by those of their own rank; that is, by the rest of the lords ”

“ I never heard of any that disliked the English government but some of the prince’s progenitors Kings of England; who thinking themselves shackled and manacled by the English laws, endeavoured to throw off this state-yoke, that they might rule or rather rage over their subjects [36] in regal wise only, not considering that to govern the people by the laws of the state, is not a yoke, but liberty; and the greatest security, not only to the subject, but to the King himself, and in great measure rids him of care. ”

“ The parliament, understanding that the king intended to ask an aid of money, told him that he ought to be ashamed to demand such a thing, especially feeing that in the last exaction of that kind, to which the nobles of England consented with much difficulty, he gave them a charter that he would never burden nor injure them with the like again. He was likewise grievously reprehended, and no wonder, for calling in aliens, and foolishly squandering the wealth of the kingdom upon them; marrying them to his wards without their consent, and several other of his spendthrift and tyrannous practices. ”

“ During this tedious siege of Dover castle, where Lewis and many of his barons were sure to be maintained, K. John, who had been dodging up and down, took this opportunity of making a terrible inroad into the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, where he made his usual progress northward; as if he had taken up a resolution to live and die in his calling. ”

“ As for the remaining part of the pope’s trash, it is not worth answering. “That the barons reduced K. John to those straits, that what they dared to ask, he dared not to deny.” For they asked him nothing but their own, which he ought not to have denied them, nor have put them to the trouble of coming so hardly by it. Nor was the granting of Magna Charta a foul and dishonourable composition, but just and honourable, and therefore honourable because it was just. As for the compulsion there was in it, a man that must be made to be honest, cannot complain of that himself nor any body for him. ”

“ In this history of Magna Charta, the history of the baron’s wars was necessarily involved, so that in writing one I must write both: for, as you see, they were wholly undertaken for recovering and maintaining the rights of the kingdom contained in that charter, and were in affirmance of it. Whereby they that have been told the baron’s wars were a rebellion, may know better; and every honest man will find their cause to be so just, that if he had lived in those days he must have joined in it ”

“ Yea, and all other laws used in the realm, when they halt, or are defective in any point, they may, in every parliament, be set to rights. Whereupon it may be rightly concluded, that the laws of England are the best in the world, either actually or potentially, since they can easily be brought into act or being. To the performance whereof, as often as equity so requires, every King is bound by an oath solemnly taken at the time of receiving his crown. ”

“ The year following, though England still lay under oppression, yet the Welsh were resolved to bear the tyranny no longer, but stood up for their country and the maintenance of their laws, and baffled several armies, first of the prince and afterwards of the King. They were ten thousand horse, and many more foot; who, entering into a mutual association, swore upon the gosples, that they would manfully and faithfully fight to the death for the liberties of their country and their antient laws, and declared they had rather die with honour than spin out a wretched life in disgrace. ”

“ So far have I cleared them from presumption as vassals: now as knights. It is true, their tenure was to assist the King against the enemies of the realm; but how, if he turned so himself? Unjust oppression, which is the pope’s own supposition, is no friendly part. Must they then aid him against the realm, and be the instruments of his unjust oppression upon themselves? Their duty and service was to the realm in chief, to him it was subaltern: and therefore, knowing their duty better than the pope did, they all left K. John but seven, before he would consent to the parliament at Running-Mead. ”

“ In the mean time, most of the barons were at London, where we left them, making holiday for the grant of Magna Charta, and pleasing themselves, that after so long oppression and Ægyptian bondage, the liberties of England were restored again in their days. They thought, likewise, that God had touch’d the King’s heart, and he was become a new man, and meant the good faith he had sworn, and flattered themselves that he would, from henceforward, inviolably observe their charters. ”

“ The archbishop of Canterbury, who ought to be like a shield against the assaults of the enemy, was engaged in secular affairs beyond sea, taking little care of his flock in England. The magnanimous patriots and hearty lovers of the realm, namely, the archbishop of York, Robert Grosthead, bishop of Lincoln, Warin de Munchemsil, and many others, were dead and gone. In the mean time, the Poitovin kindred of the King with the provincials, and now the Spaniards and the Romans, are daily enriched with the revenues as fast as they arise, and are promoted to honours, while the English are repulsed. ”

“ As for instance, the writs of election at this day call for some of the discreetest to be chosen to parliament, though the members do not assume that title; and I know so much of the old English genius, that they would no more have called themselves a Wittenagemote, than this present parliament would call their votes, which come out day by day, Journal des Scavans.
But I will wave conjectures, even in antiquities, (though we are there oftentimes forced to go in the dark, to tread upon ruins, and to feel out our way;) because I have direct proof that the Folkmote made all the laws we ever had. ”

“ Because in every thing he transgresses the bounds of truth; and where there is no truth, no certainty can be had. It was told them likewise by the gentlemen of the bed-chamber, who were most intimate with the King, that he would by no means grant them their desire about the justiciary, chancellor and treasurer. Moreover, their prelates were bloodily grieved about their tenth, which they promised conditionally, and now were forced to pay absolutely, the church being used like a servant maid. The nobles were wounded with the exaction which hung over their heads, and were bewildered. ”

“ John, by the grace of God King of England, to the archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, barons, justices, foresters, sheriffs, prevosts, ministers, and all his bailiffs and his lieges, greeting. Know ye, that we by the grace of God, and for the saving of our soul, and the souls of all our ancestors, and of our heirs, and for the honour of God, and the safety of holy church, and for the amendment of our government, by the advice of our honoured fathers, Stephen, archbishop of Canterbury, primate of all England, and cardinal of Rome ”

“ But as we cannot hate our country, so for the same reason we cannot but hate such a generation of men, as for their own little ends are willing to enslave it to all posterity; wherein, they are worse than Esau, for he only sold his own birth-right for a mess of pottage, but not that of other folks too.
In the year 1258, a parliament was called to London the day after Hoke Tuesday, for great and weighty affairs, for the King had engaged and entangled himself in great and amazing debts to the pope about the king of Apulia, and he was likewise sick of his Welch war. ”

“ All evil customs of forests and warrens, and of foresters and warrenners of sheriffs and their ministers, of rivers and of guarding them, shall forthwith be inquired of in every county, by twelve knights sworn of the same county, who must be chosen by the good men of the same county. And within forty days after they have made such inquisition, the said evil customs shall be utterly abolished by those same knights, so as never to be revived; provided they be first made known to us, or to our chief justice if we be out of the realm. ”

“ For the good estate of the realm, King Alfred caused the counties to assemble, and ordained it for a perpetual usage, that at two times yearly, or oftener if need were, in time of peace, they should assemble at London, to sit in parliament, for the guidance of God’s people, how the nation should keep themselves from sin, live in quiet, and receive right by certain usages and holy judgments. ”

“ Now this God forbid, and the harsh supposition of breaking an oath at the very making of it, is better omitted, when it is for every body’s ease rather to suppose that it will be faithfully kept; especially seeing that in case it be unhappily broken, the very natural force and virtue of a contract does of itself supply that omission. Neither is it practised in articles of agreement and covenants under hand and seal between man and man, to make a special provision, that upon breach of covenants they shall sue one another either at common-law, or in chancery ”

“ The barons might well say that the pope went upon false suggestions; for he is out in every thing. For first, there was no winning of King John by seeking to him: he would not have granted them their liberties, if they had kissed his toe. The barons had really borne longer with him than they ought: for having stipulated to have their rights restored to them before they admitted him to the crown, it was too long to stay above fifteen years for them, and to suffer so much mischief to be done in the mean time through their neglect. ”