have one tooth violently wrenched
out of his head--beginning with the double teeth. For seven days, the
oppressed man bore the daily pain and lost the daily tooth; but, on the
eighth, he paid the money. With the treasure raised in such ways, the
King made an expedition into Ireland, where some English nobles had
revolted. It was one of the very few places from which he did not run
away; because no resistance was shown. He made another expedition into
Wales--whence he _did_ run away in the end: but not before he had got
from the Welsh people, as hostages, twenty-seven young men of the best
families; every one of whom he caused to be slain in the following year.

To Interdict and Excommunication, the Pope now added his last sentence;
Deposition. He proclaimed John no longer King, absolved all his subjects
from their allegiance, and sent Stephen Langton and others to the King of
France to tell him that, if he would invade England, he should be
forgiven all his sins--at least, should be forgiven them by the Pope, if
that would do.

As there was nothing that King Philip desired more than to invade
England, he collected a great army at Rouen, and a fleet of seventeen
hundred ships to bring them over. But the English people, however
bitterly they hated the King, were not a people to suffer invasion
quietly. They flocked to Dover, where the English standard was, in such
great numbers to enrol themselves as defenders of their native land, that
there were not provisions for them, and the King could only select and
retain sixty thousand. But, at this crisis, the Pope, who had his own
reasons for objecting to either King John or King Philip being too
powerful, interfered. He entrusted a legate, whose name was PANDOLF,
with the easy task of frightening King John. He sent him to the English
Camp, from France, to terrify him with exaggerations of King Philip's
power, and his own weakness in the discontent of the English Barons and
people. Pandolf discharged his commission so well, that King John, in a
wretched panic, consented to acknowledge Stephen Langton; to resign his
kingdom 'to God, Saint Peter, and Saint Paul'--which meant the Pope; and
to hold it, ever afterwards, by the Pope's leave, on payment of an annual
sum of money. To this shameful contract he publicly bound himself in the
church of the Knights Templars at Dover: where he laid at the legate's
feet a part of the tribute, which the legate haughtily trampled up