which still acknowledged
his authority [u]; and he carried war into Philip's dominions. He
besieged a castle near Angiers; but the approach of Prince Lewis,
Philip's son, obliged him to raise the siege with such precipitation,
that he left his tents, machines, and baggage behind him; and he
returned to England with disgrace. About the same time he heard of
the great and decisive victory gained by the King of France at Bovines
over the Emperor Otho, who had entered France at the head of a hundred
and fifty thousand Germans; a victory which established for ever the
glory of Philip, and gave full security to all his dominions. John
could, therefore, think henceforth of nothing farther than of ruling
peaceably his own kingdom; and his close connexions with the pope,
which he was determined at any price to maintain, ensured him, as he
imagined, the certain attainment of that object. But the last and
most grievous scene of this prince's misfortunes still awaited him;
and he was destined to pass through a series of more humiliating
circumstances than had ever yet fallen to the lot of any other
monarch.
[FN [u] Queen Eleanor died in 1203 or 1204.]

[MN Discontents of the barons.]
The introduction of the feudal law into England by William the
Conqueror had much infringed the liberties, however imperfect, enjoyed
by the Anglo-Saxons in their ancient government, and had reduced the
whole people to a state of vassalage under the king or barons, and
even the greater part of them to a state of real slavery. The
necessity also of intrusting great power in the hands of a prince, who
was to maintain military dominion over a vanquished nation, had
engaged the Norman barons to submit to a more severe and absolute
prerogative than that to which men of their rank, in other feudal
governments, were commonly subjected. The power of the crown, once
raised to a high pitch, was not easily reduced; and the nation, during
the course of a hundred and fifty years, was governed by an authority
unknown, in the same degree, to all the kingdoms founded by the
northern conquerors. Henry I., that he might allure the people to
give an exclusion to his elder brother Robert, had granted them a
charter, favourable in many particulars to their liberties; Stephen
had renewed the grant; Henry II. had confirmed it: but the concessions
of all these princes had still remained without effect; and the same
unlimited, at least irregular authority, continued