discerned them. His quick versatile temper saw no doubt little save the
momentary gain. But that gain was immense. Nor was the price as hard to
pay as it seems to modern eyes. The Pope stood too high above earthly
monarchs, his claims, at least as Innocent conceived and expressed them,
were too spiritual, too remote from the immediate business and interests
of the day, to make the owning of his suzerainty any very practical
burthen. John could recall a time when his father was willing to own the
same subjection as that which he was about to take on himself. He could
recall the parallel allegiance which his brother had pledged to the
Emperor. Shame indeed there must be in any loss of independence, but in
this less than any, and with Rome the shame of submission had already
been incurred. But whatever were the king's thoughts his act was
decisive. On the 15th of May 1213 he knelt before the legate Pandulf,
surrendered his kingdom to the Roman See, took it back again as a
tributary vassal, swore fealty and did liege homage to the Pope.

[Sidenote: Its Results]

In after times men believed that England thrilled at the news with a
sense of national shame such as she had never felt before. "He has become
the Pope's man" the whole country was said to have murmured; "he has
forfeited the very name of king; from a free man he has degraded himself
into a serf." But this was the belief of a time still to come when the
rapid growth of national feeling which this step and its issues did more
than anything to foster made men look back on the scene between John and
Pandulf as a national dishonour. We see little trace of such a feeling in
the contemporary accounts of the time. All seem rather to have regarded
it as a complete settlement of the difficulties in which king and kingdom
were involved. As a political measure its success was immediate and
complete. The French army at once broke up in impotent rage, and when
Philip turned on the enemy John had raised up for him in Flanders, five
hundred English ships under the Earl of Salisbury fell upon the fleet
which accompanied the French army along the coast and utterly destroyed
it. The league which John had so long matured at once disclosed itself.
Otto, reinforcing his German army by the knighthood of Flanders and
Boulogne as well as by a body of mercenaries in the pay of the English
king, invaded France from the north. John called on his baronage to
follow him over sea for an attack o