, in case of disobedience, they would instantly burn them
with the convent [k]. Innocent, prognosticating, from the violence
and imprudence of these measures, that John would finally sink in the
contest, persevered the more vigorously in his pretensions, and
exhorted the king not to oppose God and the church any longer, nor to
prosecute that cause for which the holy martyr, St. Thomas, had
sacrificed his life, and which had exalted him equal to the highest
saints in heaven [l]: a clear hint to John to profit by the example of
his father; and to remember the prejudices and established principles
of his subjects, who bore a profound veneration to that martyr, and
regarded his merits as the subject of their chief glory and
exultation.
[FN [i] Rymer, vol. i. p. 143. [k] M. Paris, p. 156. Trivet, p. 151.
Ann. Waverl. p. 169. [l] M. Paris, p. 157.]

Innocent, finding that John was not sufficiently tamed to submission,
sent three prelates, the Bishops of London, Ely, and Worcester, to
intimate, that if he persevered in his disobedience, the sovereign
pontiff would be obliged to lay the kingdom under an interdict [m].
All the other prelates threw themselves on their knees before him, and
entreated him, with tears in their eyes, to prevent the scandal of
this sentence, by making a speedy submission to his spiritual father,
by receiving from his hands the new-elected primate, and by restoring
the monks of Christ-Church to all their rights and possessions. He
burst out into the most indecent invectives against the prelates;
swore by God's teeth, (his usual oath,) that if the pope presumed to
lay his kingdom under an interdict, he would send to him all the
bishops and clergy of England, and would confiscate all their estates;
and threatened that, if thenceforth he caught any Romans in his
dominions, he would put out their eyes and cut off their noses, in
order to set a mark upon them which might distinguish them from all
other nations [n]. Amidst all this idle violence, John stood on such
bad terms with his nobility, that he never dared to assemble the
states of the kingdom, who, in so just a cause, would probably have
adhered to any other monarch, and have defended with vigour the
liberties of the nation against these palpable usurpations of the
court of Rome. [MN Interdict of the kingdom.] Innocent, therefore,
perceiving the king's weakness, fulminated at last the sentence of
interdict, which he had for some time held su