John King

“ I am content to stay plain John King."
"A man can say he has put a good day's work behind him," Power said, "and that's as well. It helps to pull his thoughts straight at night."
[Pg 105]
"Jim, you are taking life so heavily to-day. I had to cheer up Mr. King this morning because he looked too long at the pretty girl. Now you have caught the blues somewhere."
The butcher's shop stands on this side of the hotel, and on Tuesday and Saturday the butcher stands behind his block, and chops your fate up with the meat. Mrs. Niven, Mrs. Boulder and Mrs. ”

“ KING JOHN. Why, what a madcap hath heaven lent us here! ELINOR. He hath a trick of Coeur-de-lion's face; The accent of his tongue affecteth him. Do you not read some tokens of my son In the large composition of this man? KING JOHN. Mine eye hath well examined his parts And finds them perfect Richard. Sirrah, speak, What doth move you to claim your brother's land? BASTARD. Because he hath a half-face, like my father. With half that face would he have all my land: A half-fac'd groat five hundred pound a year! ”

“ Hamilton, writing to Washington respecting him, thus describes his character: "Mr. King is a remarkably well-informed man, a very judicious one, a man of address, a man of fortune and economy, whose situation affords just ground of confidence; a man of unimpeached probity where he is known, a firm friend to the government, a supporter of the measures of the President; a man who cannot but feel that he has strong pretensions to confidence and trust." ”

“ King John has all the beauties of language and all the richness of the imagination to relieve the painfulness of the subject. The character of King John himself is kept pretty much in the back-ground; it is only marked in by comparatively slight indications. The crimes he is tempted to commit are such as are thrust upon him rather by circumstances and opportunity than of his own seeking: he is here represented as more cowardly than cruel, and as more contemptible than odious. The play embraces only a part of his history. ”

“ We are at the commencement of the reign of King John, a period of pure administrative despotism, when intestine divisions began violently to convulse the realm: when the rising energies of the people sought for some consideration of their natural rights, when they finally freed themselves from political thraldom and obtained a redress of their grievances. ”

“ And while they were standing a certain home-born slave of Domitian's, of those in the bed-chamber, was suddenly seized by the unclean spirit, and lay dead, and it was announced to the King. And the King was moved, and entreated John to help her. And John said: It is not in man to do this; but since thou knowest how to reign, but dost not know from whom thou hast received it, learn who has the power over both thee and thy kingdom. ”

“ A wise king would be careful to use such rights so as to inflict on his subjects a minimum of hardship. John, however, knew no moderation, placing “in defence” not merely a few banks at a time, but many rivers indiscriminately, including those which had never been so treated in his father’s day, and demanding that all bridges everywhere should be repaired, with the object, not so much of indulging a genuine love of sport, as of inflicting heavy amercements on those who neglected prompt obedience to his commands. ”

“ John is usually held to have agreed to the abolition of payments of every sort for judicial writs and other fees of court. Justice, unlike other valuable commodities, was, it would appear, to be obtained for nothing—an ideal never yet attained in any civilized community. A body of highly trained clerks could not be kept by the king to issue writs gratuitously to all who asked them, and a staff of judges, “who knew the law and meant to keep it,” to determine pleas which would bring in no return to the Crown. ”

“ But King John didn’t mind, any more than did he the high times of the traders along the beach. Everything went, so long as the taxes were paid. Even when his wife, Queen Mamare, elected to become a Baptist, and invited in a little, weazened, sweet-spirited, club-footed Baptist missionary, King John did not object. All he insisted on was that these wandering religions should be self-supporting and not feed a pennyworth’s out of the royal coffers. ”

“ We can hardly understand the reign of John unless we remember that at its very beginning men were learning to watch the legality of the king's actions and to demand that he respect the limitations which the law placed on his arbitrary will.
On May 25, John landed in England, and on the 27th, Ascension day, he was crowned in Westminster by the Archbishop of Canterbury before a large assembly of barons and bishops. The coronation followed the regular order, and no dissenting voice made itself heard, though a rather unusual display of force seems to have been thought necessary. ”

“ King John is the sign under whose auspices Jem Mace, the pugilist, keeps a public-house in Holywell Lane, Shoreditch. The same king also figures in Albemarle Street and in Bermondsey; whilst the great event of his reign, Magna Charta, is a sign at New Holland, Hull. John of Gaunt may be seen in many places; and we may surmise that his upholders are stanch Protestants, who value his character as a reformer and supporter of Wicliffe. The Black Prince may not unlikely have come down to us in an uninterrupted line of signboards ”

“ After his marriage John went back to England for the coronation of his queen, which took place on October 8. At Lincoln he received the homage of William of Scotland and made peace with the Cistercians, and then went on a progress through the north as far as Carlisle. In the meantime, as was to be expected, hostilities had begun with the family of the Count of La Marche, and the king sent out a summons to the barons of England to meet him at Portsmouth at Whitsuntide prepared for service abroad. ”

“ Nevertheless, no one, so far as I have read, has had a good word to say of King John. Green vouchsafes “the sober judgment of history” in ratification of the Billingsgatish opinion: “Foul as it is, hell itself is defiled by the fouler presence of John.” I have no kalsomine to mix for him who seems by all accounts to have been worse than his Satanic Majesty, in that John is “as black as he is painted.” Yet it is to this royal monster that England owes her Great Charter of Rights and Freedom, and one of her red letter days. ”

“ Even more oppressive on the community as a whole were the constant exactions of money which he had to make for the king's expenses. The return of John to England in 1190, or early in 1191, made at first no change, but discontent with the chancellor's conduct would naturally look to him for leadership, and it is likely John was made ready to head an active opposition by the discovery of negotiations between Longchamp and the king of Scotland for the recognition of Arthur of Britanny as the heir to the kingdom, negotiations begun—so the chancellor said—under orders from Richard. ”

“ He, however, stipulated that John, and also his mother, should have a large [Pg 97] share of influence in deciding upon all the measures of the government. John would have been by no means satisfied with this divided and uncertain share of power were it not that he was so desirous of favoring the expedition in every possible way, in hopes that if Richard could once get to the Holy Land he would soon perish there, and that then he should be king altogether. It was of comparatively little consequence who was regent in the mean time. ”

“ John bears himself sturdily; the king can punish him, but the king is honorable and will keep his word, and may remember the promised warison. The king gives thanks for the hot capons and good wine, the queen urges that the reve should be promoted. The king, nothing loath, makes John a gentleman, and gives him his manor, a hundred pound and a tun of wine yearly, then takes a collar and creates him knight. John blenches a little at the collar; he has heard that after a collar comes a rope ”

“ John, resenting bitterly the attitude of the northern barons who had refused alike to accompany him to Poitou and to pay scutage, determined to take the law into his own hands. Without summoning his opponents before a commune concilium of his feudal tenants, without even a trial and sentence by one of his Benches, without making any effort to investigate the justice or injustice of their pleas for refusing, he set out with an army to punish them. ”

“ Towards John the kindest treatment was shown, but the King explained that he was a slave, and that he must obey his orders and not try to escape, otherwise he would be given to the old women to be tortured. The chief wound up his harangue in this way: "Much good boy John. Maquina plenty big chief—heap friends. John make spear, make gun, make heap plenty all Maquina. No never go way—stay old man—heap good. ”

“ John is for a free Parliament, and that he is very great with Monk’ (Diary, 7 Feb. 1660) , a statement which confirms St. John's own account of his endeavours for that object (Case, p. 13) . To the last moment before the Restoration the Royalists suspected him of intrigues to impose conditions upon the king, or to restore Richard Cromwell (Clarendon State Papers, iii. 661, 686, 710, 729, 749) .
After the Restoration St. John's conduct during the earlier part of the struggle, and the high offices he had held under the republic and protectorate, led him to fear the worst. ”

“ D. John quieted Doña Magdalena, opening out his heart to her. These rumours, according to him, came from the Marqués de los Vélez and the Marqués de Mondejar, whose vanity was wounded, especially the former's, by D. John's victory over the Moors, which they had not been able to effect with more time, money and means of action. But these murmurs had had no influence on the King, so D. John declared. ”

“ An annually elected magistrate would, undoubtedly, feel his dependence on the citizens more than one holding office for life; but it seems probable that the chief value of the grant lay in its confirmation by John as king, of the rights conceded by him fourteen years earlier as his brother’s unauthorised representative, and enjoyed meanwhile on an insecure tenure. The charter of May, 1215, by officially recognizing the mayor, placed the commune over which he presided on a legal footing. The revolutionary civic constitution, sworn to in 1191 was now confirmed. ”

“ It is abundantly clear that the Crown reserved a free hand for itself in taxation, but there seems no evidence to support the other part of the theory, namely, that feudal justice gained new ground against royal justice in 1216 which had not been already gained in 1215.
244. It is unnecessary to invent any special catastrophe to account for the disappearance of John’s seal. Blackstone (Great Charter, xxix.) says, "King John’s great seal having been lost in passing the washes of Lincolnshire." ”

“ King John had an apartment in the King's own palace at Westminster till the Savoy Palace was prepared for him and his son. He was afterwards removed to Windsor, and then to Hertford Castle. The winter after his arrival splendid jousts were held in Smithfield. King John and his son, as well as the French lords who had been brought as prisoners to England, were allowed, on giving their parole, great liberty in England. ”

“ John quietly leaves his house before sunrise, meaning no harm to any one, and expecting none to himself. He walks out, as he says, under God’s peace and the king’s, when suddenly he is beset by about forty people who had him at feud, ‘all bodin in feir of weir;’ namely, armed with jacks, steel-bonnets, spears, lance-staffs, bows, hagbuts, pistolets, and other invasive weapons forbidden by the laws. At the head of them was William, Master of Yester—a denounced rebel on account of his slaughter of the Laird of Westerhall’s servant—Alexander Jardine, younger of Applegarth ”

“ In September 1356 John gathered the flower of his chivalry and attacked the Black Prince at Poitiers. The utter defeat of the French was made the more humiliating by the capture of their king, who had bravely led the third line of battle. Taken to England to await ransom, John was at first installed in the Savoy Palace, then at Windsor, Hertford, Somerton, and at last in the Tower. He was granted royal state with his captive companions, made a guest at tournaments, and supplied with luxuries imported by him from France. ”

“ Records, still extant, of the reign of John show us that for very petty offences, men were constantly placed “in mercy”; for example, for failure to attend meetings of the hundred or county court; for false or mistaken verdicts; for petty infringements of the king’s forest rights; and for a thousand other trivial faults. Every man who raised an action and failed in it was amerced. It will be readily understood how important it was that these amercements, forming so tempting a source of revenue to the exchequer, should not be abused. ”

“ Whether acting under pressure or from grounds of policy, John lost no time in instituting the machinery necessary for effecting this part of the reforms. On the very day on which the terms of peace were finally concluded between king and barons at Runnymede, namely, on 19th June, 1215, he began the issue of writs to sheriffs, warreners, and river bailiffs. Within a few days every one of these had been certified of the settlement arrived at, and had received commands to have twelve 513knights chosen by the county in the first county court, who should make sworn inquest into evil customs. ”

“ John surrounded himself with evil counsellors, Simon de Buci, Robert de Lorris, Nicolas Braque, men of low origin who robbed the treasury and oppressed the people, while the king gave himself up to tournaments and festivities. In imitation of the English order of the Garter, he established the knightly order of the Star, and celebrated its festivals with great display. Raids of the Black Prince in Languedoc led to the states-general of 1355, which readily voted money, but sanctioned the right of resistance against all kinds of pillage—a distinct commentary on the incompetence of the king. ”