le. The country rose as one man at his refusal. At the close of May
London threw open her gates to the forces of the barons, now arrayed
under Robert Fitz-Walter as "Marshal of the Army of God and Holy Church."
Exeter and Lincoln followed the example of the capital; promises of aid
came from Scotland and Wales; the northern barons marched hastily under
Eustace de Vesci to join their comrades in London. Even the nobles who
had as yet clung to the king, but whose hopes of conciliation were
blasted by his obstinacy, yielded at last to the summons of the "Army of
God." Pandulf indeed and Archbishop Langton still remained with John, but
they counselled, as Earl Ranulf and William Marshal counselled, his
acceptance of the Charter. None in fact counselled its rejection save his
new Justiciar, the Poitevin Peter des Roches, and other foreigners who
knew the barons purposed driving them from the land. But even the number
of these was small; there was a moment when John found himself with but
seven knights at his back and before him a nation in arms. Quick as he
was, he had been taken utterly by surprise. It was in vain that in the
short respite he had gained from Christmas to Easter he had summoned
mercenaries to his aid and appealed to his new suzerain, the Pope.
Summons and appeal were alike too late. Nursing wrath in his heart, John
bowed to necessity and called the barons to a conference on an island in
the Thames, between Windsor and Staines, near a marshy meadow by the
river side, the meadow of Runnymede. The king encamped on one bank of the
river, the barons covered the flat of Runnymede on the other. Their
delegates met on the 15th of June in the island between them, but the
negotiations were a mere cloak to cover John's purpose of unconditional
submission. The Great Charter was discussed and agreed to in a single
day.

[Sidenote: The Great Charter]

Copies of it were made and sent for preservation to the cathedrals and
churches, and one copy may still be seen in the British Museum, injured
by age and fire, but with the royal seal still hanging from the brown,
shrivelled parchment. It is impossible to gaze without reverence on the
earliest monument of English freedom which we can see with our own eyes
and touch with our own hands, the great Charter to which from age to age
men have looked back as the groundwork of English liberty. But in itself
the Charter was no novelty, nor did it claim to establish any new
constituti