.I. CHAP prince. That these transactions might be valid, according to the principles of the feudal jurisprudence, a curious farce was enacted. John had never performed that homage, which was requisite to entitle a vassal to the legal possession, and consequently to the power of disposing, of his estates. Philip, therefore, though he was already master by conquest of several of the places ceded by the treaty, restored them to the English king; who first did homage and swore fealty to his sovereign lord, and then, being thus lawfully seized of his foreign dominions, transferred the stipulated portions with the proper ceremonies to Philip and Louis. Their former friendship now seemed to revive and when John visited Paris, the French king resigned his own palace for the accommodation of his brother of England.7 Philip divorced. Had Jolin possessed the spirit and enterprise of Richard, he might have obtained very different terms from Philip, who at that moment was engaged in a warm and dangerous controversy with the pontiff Innocent III. Several years before, while Richard was in captivity, he had solicited the hand of Ingelburga, the 7 Hov. 452. 454. 456. West. 264. Rigord. 44. Blanche was daughter to John's sister Eleanor, who had borne her husband, Alphonso of Castile, three sons and four daughters.-During this year the king published a law at Hastings asserting his dominion over the British seas, and ordering all foreign ships to strike their topsails to his flag under the penalty of capture and confiscation. Selden, Mare clausum. ii. 265. I. beautiful sister of the king of Denmark. In- CHAP. gelburga was conducted to Amiens: the ceremony of her marriage was immediately followed by that of her coronation: and the next morning Philip, to the astonishment of the world, required her attendants to convey her back to her brother. On their refusal she was sent to a convent: and a divorce was pronounced by the archbishop of Rheims under the pretence of affinity, as she was cousin to Philip's deceased wife. The king, though his offers were contemptuously rejected by several princesses, at length found a woman who dared to trust to his honour, in Agnes, the daughter of the duke of Moravia. They were married, and continued to cohabit, in defiance of the prohibition of pope Celestine, who had annulled the sentence of the archbishop. To Celestine succeeded Innocent, a pontiff, who to the vigour of youth and an unsullied purity of character added the most lofty notions of the papal authority, and a determination to restrain the excesses and immorality of the different princes of christendom. At the request of the king of Denmark he espoused the cause of Ingelburga and his legate, the cardinal Peter, laid the dominions of Philip under an interdict. This was to punish the innocent for the guilty: but it had the effect of subduing that obstinacy, which had been proof against the considerations of honour and conscience. Unable to 1200. Jan.j R I. 1201. -Mar. enforce disobedience to the interdict, and assailed by the clamours of his subjects, Philip Aug. 7. consented to dismiss Agnes, to treat Ingelburga as queen, and to submit to the revision of the original sentence. In the council of Soissons the beauty and tears of the Danish princess pleaded forcibly in her favour: the objections of her opponents were easily refuted; and the legate had prepared to pronounce judgment, when Philip informed him that he acknowledged the validity of the marriage. Ingelburga derived at the time little benefit from her victory. With the title of queen she was confined in a fortress, and strictly debarred from the society of any but her own women. After some years they were reconciled.8 John divorced. The failure of Philip in this attempt to sport with the matrimonial contract, did not deter John from following his example. Twelve years had elapsed since his marriage with Hadwisa or Johanna, the heiress to the earldom of Glocester. Interest, not affection, had brought about their union: but her estates, however valuable to the earl of Mortaigne, were of little consequence to the king of England: and a sentence of divorce on the usual plea of consanguinity was readily granted by the archbishop of Bourdeaux. John immediately sent ambassadors to Lisbon to demand the princess of s Hoved. 416. 456. 461. 464. I. Portugal: but before he could receive an answer, CHAP. saw by accident Isabella, daughter to Aymar, count of Angouleme, who had been publicly promised, and privately espoused, to Hugh, count of La Marche. The king was captivated by her beauty the glare of a crown seduced the faith of the father and his daughter: and the unexpected marriage of Isabella and John deprived the princess of Portugal of a husband, the count de la Marche of a wife. The complaints of the one and the threats of the other were equally disregarded. John conducted his bride in triumph to England, and was crowned with her at Westminster by the primate.9 It is from this inauspicious marriage that we Captivity must date the decline of the Plantagenet family. When Isabella was seduced from her husband, John was lord of the French coast from the borders of Flanders to the foot of the Pyrenees in three years he had irrevocably lost the best portion of this valuable territory, the provinces which his predecessors had inherited 9 Hoved. 457. 461. Paris, 163. At this time all the nations of Christendom were thrown into consternation by the commentators on the apocalypse, who do not appear to have been better gifted with the spirit of prophecy than their more recent successors. They taught that at the end of the year 1200 expired the term of 1000 years, during which the devil was to be bound in the bottomless pit (Rev. xx. 1-3): and left it to the imagination of their hearers to conceive the confusion he would cause, and the horrors he would perpetrate, now that he was at liberty. Quod si diabolus ligatus, says Hoveden, tot et tanta intulerit mala mundo, quot et quanta inferet solutus? Precemur ergo, &c. Hoved, 465. 1200. Oct. 8. of Arthur. I. 1202. : CHAP. from William of Normandy, and Fulk of Anjou. The sword of the count de la Marche was indeed too feeble to inflict any serious injury. The arrival of John soon restrained his predatory incursions: and a summons to appear with his partisans in the king's court warned him to look round for protection. He appealed to the justice of Philip their common lord; nor was that prince sorry that the tergiversation of John afforded him a pretext for humbling so powerful a vassal. The provisions of the late treaty were instantly forgotten: the discontented barons hastened to join the banner of the French king: fortress after fortress surrendered to the confederates and the heart of John sank in despondency, when an unexpected event arrested the progress of his enemies, and gave him a temporary superiority. Eleanor, the queen mother, was lodged in the castle of Mirabeau in Poitou. Its garrison was as weak as its defences were contemptible: and the glory of making her a prisoner was allotted to the young Arthur her grandson. Accompanied by the barons of the province he invested Mirabeau. The gates were easily forced; but the queen, retiring into the tower, refused to capitulate, and found means to acquaint her son with her danger. John, roused from his apathy, flew to her relief; routed the enemy who came out to oppose him; entered the walls together with the fugitives; and after a sharp Aug. 1. |