to be exercised
both by them and their successors. The only happiness was, that arms
were never yet ravished from the hands of the barons and people: the
nation, by a great confederacy, might still vindicate its liberties;
and nothing was more likely than the character, conduct, and fortunes
of the reigning prince to produce such a general combination against
him. Equally odious and contemptible, both in public and private
life, he affronted the barons by his insolence, dishonoured their
families by his gallantries, enraged them by his tyranny, and gave
discontent to all ranks of men by his endless exactions and
impositions [w]. The effect of these lawless practices had already
appeared in the general demand made by the barons of a restoration of
their privileges; and after he had reconciled himself to the pope, by
abandoning the independence of the kingdom, he appeared to all his
subjects in so mean a light, that they universally thought they might
with safety and honour insist upon their pretensions.
[FN [w] Chron Mailr. p. 188. T. Wykes, p. 36. Ann. Waverl. p. 181.
W. Heming. p. 557.]

But nothing forwarded this confederacy so much as the concurrence of
Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury; a man whose memory, though he was
obtruded on the nation by a palpable encroachment of the see of Rome,
ought always to be respected by the English. This prelate, whether he
was moved by the generosity of his nature and his affection to public
good; or had entertained an animosity against John on account of the
long opposition made by that prince to his election; or thought that
an acquisition of liberty to the people would serve to increase and
secure the privileges of the church; had formed the plan of reforming
the government, and had prepared the way for that great innovation, by
inserting those singular clauses above-mentioned in the oath which he
administered to the king, before he would absolve him from the
sentence of excommunication. Soon after, in a private meeting of some
principal barons at London, he showed them a copy of Henry I.'s
charter, which, he said, he had happily found in a monastery; and he
exhorted them to insist on the renewal and observance of it: the
barons swore, that they would sooner lose their lives than depart from
so reasonable a demand [x]. The confederacy began now to spread
wider, and to comprehend almost all the barons in England; and a new
and more numerous meeting was summoned by Langt