them to something
of their old free government again by the very machinery of election it
used to facilitate its heavy taxation. On the other hand the loss of
Normandy brought home the king. The growth which had been going on had
easily escaped the eyes of rulers who were commonly absent from the realm
and busy with the affairs of countries beyond the sea. Henry the Second
had been absent for years from England: Richard had only visited it twice
for a few months: John had as yet been almost wholly occupied with his
foreign dominions. To him as to his brother England had as yet been
nothing but a land whose gold paid the mercenaries that followed him, and
whose people bowed obediently to his will. It was easy to see that
between such a ruler and such a nation once brought together strife must
come: but that the strife came as it did and ended as it did was due
above all to the character of the king.

[Sidenote: John]

"Foul as it is, hell itself is defiled by the fouler presence of John."
The terrible verdict of his contemporaries has passed into the sober
judgement of history. Externally John possessed all the quickness, the
vivacity, the cleverness, the good-humour, the social charm which
distinguished his house. His worst enemies owned that he toiled steadily
and closely at the work of administration. He was fond of learned men
like Gerald of Wales. He had a strange gift of attracting friends and of
winning the love of women. But in his inner soul John was the worst
outcome of the Angevins. He united into one mass of wickedness their
insolence, their selfishness, their unbridled lust, their cruelty and
tyranny, their shamelessness, their superstition, their cynical
indifference to honour or truth. In mere boyhood he tore with brutal
levity the beards of the Irish chieftains who came to own him as their
lord. His ingratitude and perfidy brought his father with sorrow to the
grave. To his brother he was the worst of traitors. All Christendom
believed him to be the murderer of his nephew, Arthur of Britanny. He
abandoned one wife and was faithless to another. His punishments were
refinements of cruelty, the starvation of children, the crushing old men
under copes of lead. His court was a brothel where no woman was safe from
the royal lust, and where his cynicism loved to publish the news of his
victims' shame. He was as craven in his superstition as he was daring in
his impiety. Though he scoffed at priests and turned h