art of his French
possessions, Anjou, Normandy, Touraine, Maine, and Poitou. Philip would
have been quite willing to dispense with any legal procedure by way of
sanction to his conquests, but John furnished him with an excellent
pretext; for on the 3d of April, 1203, he assassinated with his own hand,
in the tower of Rouen, his young nephew Arthur, Duke of Brittany, and in
that capacity vassal of Philip Augustus, to whom he was coming to do
homage. Philip had John, also his vassal, cited before the court of the
barons of France, his peers, to plead his defence of this odious act.
"King John," says the contemporary English historian Matthew Paris, "sent
Eustace, Bishop of Ely, to tell King Philip that he would willingly go to
his court to answer before his judges, and to show entire obedience in
the matter, but that he must have a safe-conduct. King Philip replied,
but with neither heart nor visage unmoved, 'Willingly; let him come in
peace and safety.' 'And return so too, my lord?' said the bishop.
'Yes,' rejoined the king, 'if the decision of his peers allow him.'
And when the envoys from England entreated him to grant to the King of
England to go and return in safety, the King of France was wroth, and
answered with his usual oath, 'No, by all the saints of France, unless
the decision tally therewith.' 'My lord king,' rejoined the bishop, 'the
Duke of Normandy cannot come unless there come also the King of England,
since the duke and the king are one and the same person. The baronage of
England would never allow it in any way, and if the king were willing,
he would run, as you know, risk of imprisonment or death.' King Philip
answered him, 'How now, my lord bishop? It is well known that my
liegeman, the Duke of Normandy, by violence got possession of England.
And so, prithee, if a vassal increase in honor and power, shall his lord
suzerain lose his rights? Never!'

"King John was not willing to trust to chance and the decision of the
French, who liked him not; and he feared above everything to be
reproached with the shameful murder of Arthur. The grandees of France,
nevertheless, proceeded to a decision, which they could not do lawfully,
since he whom they had to try was absent, and would have gone had he been
able."

The condemnation, not a whit the less, took full effect; and Philip
Augustus thus recovered possession of nearly all the territories which
his father, Louis VII., had kept but for a moment. He